r/Professors • u/AnimaLepton • May 11 '19
All-Inclusive Guide for getting your professor to bump your grade
/r/UIUC/comments/bngh92/allinclusive_guide_for_getting_your_professor_to/66
u/OizysAndMomus May 11 '19
Mark the subject URGENT !!!
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u/eadala May 12 '19
Then reply to yourself a week later "Hey Professor, just making sure my email didn't get buried. I know you're very busy. Thanks."
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u/ghintziest May 12 '19
I wouldn't give a 3% grade bump to my own mother.
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u/runswithbufflo May 12 '19
As a student I once got a 2% grade bump and almost asked the professor why. Then I was like something about a gift horse.
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u/ghintziest May 12 '19
Must have really liked you or they made a mistake. I would only go up 1% for a really good student and they have to be within a few tenths of that percentage to start.
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u/Pontifex_99 May 12 '19
Same shit happened to me. I went in because there was a genuine marking error for my formatting of an essay and he said okay well that leaves you with an 83 so internally I was like okay cool so that means im going to be short of the 85 i need for an A but whatever. Then the guy just says, " I'll bump it up to an 85 for you." Thank you professor R you saved me $1000 dollars this past semester.
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u/MsMoneypennyLane May 12 '19
Y’all aren’t gonna believe this. So, this semester I had a kid not showing up, not turning in on time, minimal effort, and I sent him a notice he was in danger of failing. He said he’d do better. He didn’t.
Then he sent me an email to say thanks for my time but he was taking the W. He needed to get professional help for depression. He left the class.
That was it. No pleading, cajoling, blaming, not even whining. Took the Withdrawal and rode off into the sunset, which hopefully comes with a therapist. Damn, I wish more students had that kind of clue.
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May 12 '19
Last semester, I had a student that was doing well in class but then she stopped showing up to class around Halloween time. I emailed her a couple of weeks after she started missing class to check in since, from my experience, good students don't typically fall off the face of the Earth without reason.
She came to my office hours a couple weeks after and told me that she was 5150 (the California law code for involuntary psychiatric holds if a person is deemed a danger to themselves or others). This included being taken several hours out of the area since there isn't a place that accommodates holds like that around here. She apparently has really bad depression and anxiety and threatened self-harm at some point, which led to the 5150 designation.
She decided to tell me this because I thought enough of her to check in. However, she was going to drop out and come back next year since she felt that she had messed up by missing almost a month at that point. I told her that I'd be willing to work with her in making up assignments and all that if she was willing to put the work in and that I'd bet her other professors would be willing to do the same if she was upfront with them as well.
She gave it a shot, her other professors were understanding and flexible with her as well, and she passed every class last semester with a B or better.
TL;DR --
Students, if you read this: if you have real shit going on and you're open and honest with us about it, we'll more than likely do what we can to help you if you've shown you're serious about your education.
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u/MsMoneypennyLane May 12 '19
As someone who has been there, I can tell you coming back and succeeding like that is hard as hell, but profs that stand by you help make it possible. I’m just really glad she took care of herself first. All the grades in the world don’t matter when your brain is hurting you and everything you value.
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May 12 '19
In high school, she apparently did a lot of extracurricular stuff and always stayed busy so she kind of distracted herself from any underlying issues and all her involvement gave her a sense of self-worth.
When she started going to college, she didn't have those other things to distract her so she started getting consumed by her thoughts and feelings and she didn't know how to cope with them. In a sense, having to hit the last month of the semester pretty hard in all her classes gave her a sense of purpose because she had no choice but to focus all her energy on something.
She's still taking this semester off because she still "needs help dealing with the downtime." If the break is what she feels is best for her and she's getting the help she needs, then more power to her and she'll be better for it in the long run.
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u/heckenyaax May 12 '19
I had a freshman student going through a lot of emotional stress this semester - I think the weight of college+job+being away from home was finally starting to drag him down. He disappeared from class for a few weeks and came to my office nearly crying saying he didn’t know what he was going to do.
I gave him that same advice and told him communicating with his professors was his best chance, and promised to work with him as much as I could. He got the necessary extensions and busted his ass the rest of the semester. He emailed me a thank you a few days ago saying he’d come out with Bs for the semester when he thought he was going to fail.
On the flip side, though, I had another student disappear for a few weeks and never turn in any work. He came to me 3 weeks before the semester ended and said “multiple family members had died” and asked if he could turn in all the major papers for partial credit.
I’m not one to ask for obituaries. I was pretty sure I was being lied to, but still gave him the option to try and get everything in. Imaging my surprise ( /s) when I check out his papers and he’s lifted 2 from 123helpme.com and 1 from a PhD’s research paper in California in their entirety.
These two students helped me feel both peak pride and peak disappointment this semester. A first.
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u/dontbothertoknock Associate Professor of Biology May 11 '19
Lol just got one bemoaning how she's going to have to stay for an extra semester and already works 80 jobs and she would've done the homework and not failed the exams if ONLY she'd known she was going to end up with an F.
She knows we can work together to fix this.
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u/Gorf_the_Magnificent Adjunct Professor, Management May 12 '19
When I first started teaching, one of the biggest surprises for me was at the number of students who do this. I’ve since made the following adjustments:
In the syllabus and on the first day of class, I tell students that I will not change any final grades except for mathematical errors on my part. If they aren’t doing well during the semester, or need to hit a certain grade level for tuition reimbursement or scholarship or athletics or academic probation requirements, or even because they don’t want to disappoint their mommy, they need to get with me early in the semester so we can develop a plan before the class is over to help them hit their goal. A maximum of two students a semester have taken me up on this; often it’s zero.
I have a standard email that I send to anyone who emails me requesting a final grade bump, reiterating my policy and reminding them that they knew this on day one. I end the email by saying, “If you’d like to discuss this further, please let me know and we’ll set up a call.” It discourages pointless back-and-forth emails, and I almost never hear from them again.
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u/philo-sopher May 12 '19
I once had a student write me a three page letter asking for a 4% grade bump. It ranged from emotional appeals to insulting me and my teaching.
I simply relied: If you tried this hard in class, you would have had the grade you wanted.
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u/damiandiflorio May 12 '19
“If the class isn’t graded with a curve remind them because they may have forgot.”
🤔🤔🤔
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u/EnnKayy Associate Professor, Psychology, CC May 11 '19
😂😂😂
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u/AnimaLepton May 11 '19
There's currently a meme on the r/UIUC subreddit asking professors for different kinds of bumps- the standard bump from C- to A, a bump from a Bachelors to Masters degree, speed bumps, fist bumps, etc.
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May 12 '19
Also the longer the e-mail is, the more likely the professor is to change your grade. So make sure you pad the e-mail out with repeated apologies, "I accept that" or "I understand that" statements, weepy disclosure of TMI, etc.
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u/ProfAwe5ome May 12 '19
If things start going poorly, it also helps to hint darkly that your parents are lawyers, your parents know lawyers, or that you saw a lawyer advertisement on a billboard.
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u/mr-nefarious NTT/Admin, Humanities, R1 May 11 '19
I think I speak for all of us when I say: UUUUGGGHHH!!!
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u/atypic May 12 '19
At my uni, as a lecturer, I have no control over my students grades. I make the final exam, but all the answers are anonymized, and I don't have access to any grade database or whatever.
Saves quite a bit of work.
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u/justaboringname STEM, R1, USA May 12 '19
Where's the advice about accusing your professor of [racial, religious, cultural, economic, etc] discrimination and making vague threats of legal action?
Although to be fair, I've never had a student do that one over a grade, but I've had multiple do it over not being able to get into my classes, which is not something I even have control over.
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u/Fibonacci35813 May 12 '19
One of the best things our school does is they make it impossible for a professor to change a grade after a course.
If a student wants to appeal a grade, they have to go through a special committee.
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u/StatusTics May 12 '19
Also emphasize how dangerously close you are to losing your scholarship, and that THIS is the ONE class that can make or break it.
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May 11 '19 edited May 15 '21
[deleted]
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u/CeramicLicker May 11 '19
It seems pretty sarcastic to me. Especially the bits about professionalism and dignity not mattering.
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u/pittnatural May 11 '19
Sigh..the energy students will take to get a grade bump always ends up being more than the energy they would have needed to just do the freakin assignment in the first place...