UNFAIR grading by PROFESSOR (What can students do)
How to I ask my professor to regrade an assignment?
If you want to ask your professor to regrade an assignment, you need to figure out why you think you deserve a better grade before you approach them about it.
If you honestly believe that your professor didn’t grade your assignment fairly or you think that they might have misunderstood your point of view, it’s okay to discuss this with them. But you need to make sure you take ownership and don’t place blame on them.
If you come at them with anger, it won’t likely help your situation. Be polite and talk with them about your grade and try to find out why they deducted points. It might actually be more fair than you think.
As a former professor, I have received many emails from students who weren’t happy with their performance on their assignment.
They often asked me to regrade it in hopes of getting a higher grade because they honestly think that they deserved a better grade.
In all my years of teaching college students, I have never ever regraded assignments EXCEPT in a few rare circumstances. I only regraded assignments when a student helped me understand what they meant to say as it was all just a misunderstanding.
You may be one of those students who feels like your professor is just a very hard grader and deducted points for no reason.
Or you could be one of those students who is just completely clueless as to why your professor gave you such a bad grade on an assignment. Or maybe it is the first bad grade you have ever received.
I will help you discuss this with your professor by giving you an example of an email that I would like to have received from students asking for me to reconsider their grade for an assignment.
I can’t make any promises, but I can definitely help you talk to your professor about this in a polite and eloquent way.
Remember, you shouldn’t be trying to convince your professor to regrade your assignment, instead you are trying to get your professor to understand your perspective on the assignment.
When you do this, your professor may realize that they didn’t grade it correctly because they misunderstood what you were trying to say. This will only work on certain assignments. Some assignments have clear answers, while other assignments are more subjective.
On occasion, your professor might feel bad for you because you misunderstood the assignment and they might let you resubmit it. So, it’s best to just talk to them.
Can you ask your professor to reconsider a grade?
A college student can ask their professor to reconsider a grade on an assignment, but this is unlikely to result in a different grade. Your professor may reconsider a grade on an assignment if you can help them understand that they misunderstood your response and this caused a grading error.
If you want to ask your professor to reconsider a grade they assigned, you need to first consider their teaching experience.
Do they have a lot of experience?
Are they a first year professor?
Are they tenured?
If your professor has been teaching for more than a few years, it is very unlikely that they made a grading mistake or that they didn’t give you a grade that you deserved.
Most professors have years of teaching experience and have graded thousands of assignments. And they have probably assigned the same assignment to dozens of classes over the years. They know what a good assignment looks like.
This means that they have really perfected their grading technique. You should have a lot of confidence in their grading capabilities.
You can still talk to them about it and get some additional clarification. Be careful how you approach them because you will probably get a better outcome if you are polite and questionable about your grade rather than directly saying that you think they mis-graded your assignment and it’s their fault.
If you don’t think you really have a good case to get your professor to regrade your assignment, you should move on and bounce back from the bad grade instead.
How do you email a professor to ask for a regrade?
If a college student wants to email their professor to regrade an assignment, they should outline why they thought they were meeting the assignment expectations. And ask the professor why they deducted points. Through this process, the student will understand why they didn’t perform as expected. The professor should have a fair and logical explanation for the assigned grade.
If the student does not agree with the grade, it is best to ask the professor to allow them to redo the assignment because they did not understand the expectations rather than arguing that the professor didn’t grade accurately.
Here is how I would word an email. But don’t just copy and paste it. This is just an example for you to reference.
Dear Professor Smith,
Thank you for grading the recent assignment. I am looking forward to receiving more feedback on this assignment because I was expecting a higher grade. I thought I had performed much better than I did. I know you have a lot of experience grading, and I was hoping you could give me some more feedback on how you deducted points. I really want to use that information to improve. Since I thought I was meeting expectations, but obviously fell short, would it be possible for me to redo the assignment since I misunderstood the requirements?
This email is short and to the point. You aren’t pointing fingers at the professor in your email, and you aren’t telling them that you deserve a better grade either.
You are trying to tell your professor that you thought you were going to do better but must have misunderstood the expectations. This puts the responsibility on you.
I think it is a better solution to ask your professor why they deducted points first because you might be able to help them understand why you completed the assignment the way you did. Maybe it really was a misunderstanding.
If it isn’t a misunderstanding, and your professor cannot provide a thorough explanation for your grade, you should just ask to redo the assignment. If that fails, you want to just focus on improving your performance on future assignments.
I recommend that you meet with your professor before submitting a similar assignment to make sure you are on the right track. At least they will know that you are really concerned about your grades and can hopefully give you some pointers.
What can a college student do about a bad grade they don’t think they deserve?
If a college student doesn’t feel like they deserved a bad grade that they received on an assignment, it is recommended that they talk with their professor and determine how they decided to deduct points. If after discussing this with them, the student still doesn’t think the grade is fair, they should ask them if they can redo the assignment instead.
As a former professor, I am going to assume that most professors aren’t going to reassign a higher grade for a student just because the student thinks they should have received a better grade.
You may argue that you have always received high grades in your courses, but grading can be subjective and it is based upon the professor’s knowledge and expectations. Every professor won’t grade the same.
However, you should still reach out to your professor and talk with them about your grade. I find this to be the best solution because your professor will be able to tell you why they assigned you the grade they think you deserved.
If your professor has a logical explanation as to why they deducted points, and can vouch for their own experience grading assignments, you might not have a good case.
What can a college student do if they think a professor is grading unfairly?
If a student thinks that their professor is grading unfairly, they should talk to their professor to ask them how they are grading their assignments, and if they have a rubric. Then they should ask their professor what an ideal assignment would look like. If they still aren’t satisfied with their professor’s responses, they could appeal their grades if their college has a grade appeal process.
I find that a student can figure out if a professor is grading fairly by discussing the following with their professor first.
Why they deducted points
If they have a grading rubric
What does an ideal assignment look like
If a professor can adequately explain how they deducted points from your assignment, will show you a grading rubric that outlines their expectations, and can easily explain what a perfect assignment would like like, they are probably grading fairly.
Keep in mind that not all assignments require a rubric. But if they have one, it is even easier for professors to prove their grades were fairly assigned.
I would even ask for the professor to tell you the class average, lowest and highest grade, and the median assignment grade. It can help you understand if other students are scoring well on these assignments or if your professor is just a tough grader.
If you still think your grade was unfair, the very last resort is to appeal your final grade in the class. Most colleges will allow students to complete grade appeals for capricious grading.
You need to check with your college about the process, and you will likely have to wait until final grades are submitted. But in the meantime, start researching the process and keep detailed records.
In my 15 years of being a professor, I never had a student file a grade appeal for this particular reason so I assume it isn’t common. But if you really have a lot of evidence that shows that your professor was arbitrarily assigning grades, you should check into this.
This process is typically handled by an office or committee at the college. Make sure you meet all the requirements though because you don’t want to waste your time.
Well, there you have it. I gave you all the information you could possibly need about asking your professor to regrade an assignment. Good luck.
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