Do professors curve grades (written by one)
About the author
Hi there. I am the prolific professor with 15 years of experience teaching online and in-person. I have a graduate degree. I have a passion for education. But I’ve also worked in the professional world (outside of education) too. Thanks for visiting.
Do professors curve scores?
Have you realized that the class average is lower than expected for a recent exam? Or did your professor discuss how poorly students are performing in their class?
If you have an online platform where the professor posts grades, you can check the class average for assignments. However, you should use caution when interpreting these averages because they would include those students who didn’t submit the assignment and received a zero. This would really lower the class average. It might not be accurate.
Either way, you found yourself here because you want to know if your professor will curve grades because of the low class average. Surely they wouldn’t want that many students to fail their class, right?
As a former professor, I am going to tell you exactly what I would do when I would observe lower grades in my classes, and what other professors usually do about it too. I will also tell you if professors can curve grades.
What does curving a grade mean?
In college, professors may curve grades in a variety of ways to achieve a higher class average. One way professors curve grades is find the highest grade and determine how many points were needed to get a perfect score and they will add those points to each person’s exam grade.
For example, when I was a professor and students did not perform as well as I would have expected, I curved the exam grades. Let’s say that the highest grade in the class was 84 points. I would subtract 84 from 100 and add the remaining 16 points to everyone’s exam.
So the person with the highest grade would receive a 100. And everyone else was 16 points higher than they originally scored.
Why do professors curve exam grades?
Professors may decide to curve exam grades if they realize that the majority of students performed poorly. When I was a professor, I would occasionally have an exam where students just didn’t do as well as students had in the past. Sometimes I would blame myself and think that I just didn’t do a good job preparing students for the exams.
In some rare instances, I would review the class grades and realize that there was some anomaly and I would decide to curve the grades. I wouldn’t just curve the grades unless I felt like there was something in my control that impacted the students’ performance on that exam.
For example, once I created a new exam and tested some new questions out. When I reviewed the test scores on my newly created exam, I realized that students failed or performed worse than they had in my past classes. It is possible that the exam questions I created were inadequate or tricky. I don’t mean for them to be tricky or confusing, but sometimes it happens.
So, I would choose to curve the exam grades when I felt like it was my fault because of the new exam I created.
There could be lots of reasons why professors curve exam grades, but it is usually because a professor looks at how students have typically scored in the past and if it’s really different, then they could curve the grades to even it out.
Professors have a pretty good idea of how students should perform in their class, and if they see really low grades, they know they might have changed something up to impact students’ performance.
Professors aren’t likely to curve grades just to help out students who didn’t put in the work. So, if professors see lower grades, but it isn’t typical for their classes AND they didn’t make any major changes in their teaching or exams, then they probably won’t curve.
Do all professors curve grades?
No, not all college professors curve students’ grades. Professors have a lot of discretion when curving grades in their classes. When I was a professor, I only curved grades about 5% of the time. I rarely had the need to curve grades but occasionally I would have a lower class average than I would expect, and I would decide to curve grades because something was off that semester.
Professors can curve one grade at a time or they could curve students’ final course grades. I find it much less common for professors to curve students’ final average. Most of the time professors will curve one assignment at a time. I never curved students’ final average.
If professors find the need to curve students’ grades a lot, they probably need to restructure their grading scale then. There is something going on if grades need to be curved a lot. It should be a rare occurrence.
Even if a class is really hard, professors should figure out why students aren’t doing well in their classes instead of continually curving grades.
How do you ask professors to curve grades?
If you want to ask your professor to curve grades, I wouldn’t ask them directly. I would ask your professor about the class average, and how they think all students are performing. Your professor is already looking at students’ grades and will assess the situation and curve if they want to. Students asking them to curve grades probably won’t work.
If you are the only student who isn’t doing well, or one of the few, then they aren’t likely to curve grades just for you. They wouldn’t want to push the class average up too high if you are the only one performing poorly.
However, if your professor says that the class average is low, you can ask them if this is normal or uncommon to them. If they say it’s concerning, then you can ask how they plan on handling it. If you get to this point in the conversation, you can ask them if they have any plans on curving course grades to even out the class average compared to their past courses.
You can also ask them if they have ever curved grades in the past, and if they expect to do that this term. But I will be honest, professors are aware of everyone’s grades, and will have already decided if they will curve grades.
But I definitely think you should talk to your professor if you are worried about your grade. And if you are failing, I have a better article dedicated to talking to your professor when you are struggling in their class.
And if you want to try and ask your professor to bump up your grade, check out my that article here.
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