Emailing a professor for points on an exam when you want a recommendation from the professor

Question

I recently took an exam in my master's program where I missed just enough points to change my grade from A+ to A (in my country, these show up differently on a transcript). I intend on applying to some extremely competitive PhD programs (otherwise I would not be concerned with this grade difference), and given my undergraduate background, this is a course where I am probably expected to get an A+. Furthermore, I am essentially depending on a letter of recommendation from the professor of this course.

After having already looked at the exam with my professor, and hearing him explain the grade justification, I believe I did not yet make a well thought-out argument as to why I should have been given certain points.

My question

Should I bother emailing this professor with my legitimate argument, or simply let it go? I will probably get a rec letter from him either way and while I want an A+ and genuinely think my work on the exam deserved it, I don't want to annoy my professor and make his opinion of me depreciate.

Edit: In this scenario, I feel that an error was made on the part of the test-writer where a question could've been reasonably interpreted in two distinct ways. I was told that because I was the only person to make this particular interpretation, that it was an unreasonable interpretation. I don't agree with this logic.

Answer 1

Let it go.

You discussed this before, he made his arguments and it is unlikely that he will change his mind. It isn't only up to you to make a good argument for the points, but the professor himself will have judged the points again when you discussed them and will now be convinced that the points are fair.

Begging even more for the points will probably not get you any more points, but may annoy the professor, e.g, because you already discussed it and you are still not satisfied after he told you the final outcome. He has neither the time to discuss this again and again, nor he will consider that he was wrong the first two times (the first assignment, then your previous discussion).

Answer 2

At U.S. top schools, recommendation letters are more important than grades.

If your professor knows you well and has a truly positive opinion of you, this will come out in the recommendation letter. The best thing you can do for yourself cultivate a real relationship with the professor (e.g. by visiting office hours, talking about ideas beyond the syllabus of your class etc). If you can talk about your goals for doing original research, so much the better.

As an aside, perfect grades aren't a very strong signal for who will be a good PhD researcher, so I really wouldn't worry about the grades very much anyway. A person who is curious and pushes themselves beyond their comfort zone -- even at the risk of getting some bad grades -- is a much better PhD admit than someone who has always gotten perfect grades.

Answer 3

If you asked me for the points and the letter, i would give you the points and reflect my irritation with you in your letter.

Answer 4

Here is my two-part opinion.

First, it would be a breach of professional ethics if a professor let the quality of their letter of recommendation depend upon whether students questioned their grading judgments. (I know for a fact that I have made grading mistakes, and I have come to terms with the fact that I need to receive all requests for reconsideration, even though the majority of them are misguided, to allow the students to have my back on the not infrequent occasions they are correct.) I know this is a statement of ideals, while you are asking about what happens in practice; for that I would guess that your cordial interactions will be remembered far more than the content of your query.

Second, I still think you should let the issue go, for the following reason that is unrelated to the letter of recommendation. You had an opportunity to present an argument about how the grading scheme was applied to your work; you did so; and the grade was confirmed. Perhaps this is a learning experience that one should take the time to formulate the best argument possible the first time around, if you think you didn't do so. But the fact that you now think you could have presented a better argument is, in my opinion, not relevant: you had a chance, and you did the best you could—none of us are perfect.

Answer 5

As a professor, I encourage you to reframe your thoughts: you didn't "miss just enough points to change [your] grade from an A+ to an A"; rather, you earned enough points to rise to an A but not quite enough to rise to an A+. It's amazing how this one detail can result in a huge shift in perspective.

--- Comment by Greg Martin

This comment by Greg Martin is so good, and so important here, that I want to highlight it here as an answer, and make some broader points about this type of situation. This is somewhat tangential to your specific question, but I will come around to the connection with your question at the end; so please bear with me.

---

In university-level teaching, it is very common to encounter intelligent ambitious students who have got high grades throughout their schooling and are used to performing at a very high level. Some unfortunately adopt an annoying way of framing their work, where they speak in a way that sets 100% success as the implicit default position, and any derogation from this constitutes "missing out" on points. This is a somewhat natural way that elite students come to speak of these things, since they have always obtained high grades throughout their schooling, and they are sufficiently talented to realistically shoot for 100% on a piece of assessment. In these cases it is somewhat natural for these elite students to frame things as "missing out" on this mark or that mark, since their focus is in weeding out remaining errors in otherwise high-level work. Unfortunately, over time, these students get sloppy with the way they talk about learning, and their language reflects the implicit view that perfect knowledge is the default position for them, and anything less than perfect performance constitutes some aberration, often in need of arguments over grades.

The other thing that is common to encounter in elite students is an implicit reversal of the relationship between learning and grades --- the elite student often considers the formal grade to be of paramount importance, and the learning as a method to increase grades. In reality, learning is of primary importance, and formal grades are merely an imperfect tool to assess the degree of success in that learning. In extreme cases, one occasionally encounters intelligent students who are so concerned with their grades that they allow opportunities for self-reflection and learning to bypass them entirely. Most university lecturers have had at least some experience of a situation where they attempt to impart some broad lesson to the student during a discussion over grades (e.g., pointing out some broad deficiency in their work that is a "soft-skill", which is not easy to quantify), where the student shows no interest in learning from that situation, but is only interested in arguing for a higher mark.

These kinds of attitudes constitute deficiencies in understanding the process of education and assessment; they reverses the true nature of what is going on. For ambitious and intelligent students this generally do not hamper learning too much so long as that learning is done in the confines of a formal course with a fixed scope and assessment structure, and with formal assessment of grades. However, once you come out of that environment, into situations without formal grading, these attitudes tend to stunt learning.

Most PhD programs are focussed primarily on training a student to be able to conduct independent scholarly research. They require students that are proactive in learning, and are hungry for knowledge and improvement outside of their formal courses. Some PhD programs have courses in the early years and others don't have any courses. If coursework is required then you're expected to get good grades in these, but they are merely considered as preparatory work for the real meat of the program --- the main focus of the program is on your ability to learn outside your courses, and to be able to advance your research work under supervision, without getting marks as feedback. Hence, when writing a letter of recommendation for a PhD program, a professor will assess your subject-matter knowledge, as reflected in your grades, but he will also try to assess your ability and willingness to learn independently beyond your formal coursework. If your focus is on making arguments to advance your own grades, to the detriment of self-reflection on your own performance, and opportunities for broader learning, this bodes poorly for your ability to succeed in a graduate research environment, where grades in courses are secondary, and self-driven learning is primary.

I mention these things because they are the background to assessments of a student's ability to engage in self-learning in graduate school. I'm certainly not saying that you have these deficiencies, but please bear in mind that your professor has probably encountered some students with these deficiencies before, and he is trying to figure out if you possess any of these problems yourself. You say in your question that you already made the case for a higher grade and you received an explanation for your marks. Ideally, that would assist you to reflect on how you can improve your work --- not improve your grades, but your work. Anything that reflects a willingness to self-reflect and improve your own work is going to reflect well on you in a letter of recommendation. Anything that reflects an attitude of focus only on formal grades, and a resistance to self-reflection will come out poorly.

Answer 6

I personally would let it go. Most of the time people (this does mainly depend on personality) think they're right and if you attack (i.e. challenge their views) them they get extremely defensive and unresponsive. If you are going to argue in favor of those extra points make the professor himself admit they are wrong; without you outright saying it. Perhaps explain the benefits of those extra points to him? Anyways that's my 2 cents.

Answer 7

There should be an appeal process, that bypasses / escalates beyond the professor's purview. If you successfully make the appeal, you may be able to get a recommendation letter from one of the board members rather than the professor whose judgment (or that of his TA) was found wanting.

Alternatively, you could take the course again with a different professor or opt for a different elective.

You are obviously between a rock and a hard place. Write your own assessment of the professor in ratemyprofessors.com to allow other students to decide whether they want to risk their careers by taking a class given by that professor, eat your losses, and then move on.

Answer 8

I agree with allo.

Some further thoughts:

It's frustrating when you haven't even gotten the chance to make your points, and a good university should develop protocols and procedures to make sure this is possible. This isn't always done, and depending on where you live and what expectations/rules apply, it might be risky to mount an objection. The fact that mounting an objection is likely to be a risky act is fundamentally not okay, however I'm not all-powerful and neither are you, and I recommend being strategic here. As buffy said, the recommendation letter is a lot more valuable than the grade. For the same reason that risking 10 thousand dollars for a chance at obtaining 1 thousand dollars is a bad idea unless the chance of losing the 10 thousand is very low, I do not think you should mount an objection.

And, please, if you're ever in a situation where you can influence the direction that university policies take, please please please influence them in the direction they need to go. Students shouldn't be punished just for making an appeal to fairness and offering some arguments in favor of their work, or for rebutting a weak rebuttal to their arguments. Nothing about this is okay.

For myself, I'm currently doing my 3rd university degree, and I've been teaching and grading for 10 years, I'm keenly aware of the deficiencies of the current system. More specifically, I live in Australia, and here universities make it their goal to make making the process of disputing a grade as hard as humanly possible.

I've seen so many examples of this. Here's one example:

A friend wanted his grades on a math assignment increased. His arguments were as follows:

1. The questions were vague and the lecturer's expectations were vague, and yet the lecturer did not respond to emails or requests for clarification, of which my friend sent many.
2. Some of the "errors" he had been penalized for were actually errors on the lecturer's part.
3. The lecturer did not give reasons for any of the grades, and there were no published marking criteria for the assignment, which was contrary to university policy.

Dot points (1) and (2) above constitute a good argument for increasing the grades, or at the very least a remark. Dot point (3) constitutes a good reason to refuse a remark until proper grading criteria have been published.

So, what happened? He met with 3 professors - the lecturer and 2 others - to discuss the issue. They essentially conceded all of his points, yet offered no grade increase, only the chance for a remark. They did not offer to publish objective grading criteria, despite that university policy required it. He explained that without such criteria, he would not accept the offer for a remark, and would only ask for a grade increase. After another meeting, they decided to decline his request for grade increase, despite a variety concessions to the effect that the lecturer had made numerous mathematical errors in his marking.

So my friend took it higher. His arguments were very strong - I would know, I helped him write the appeal. He ended up making his arguments in front of a board of university staff. A lawyer that was provided by the university union sat next to him, partly to keep notes on his behalf. At the end of the meeting, the lawyer told him that he had destroyed the opposing arguments. A few weeks later, he received their final decision. His grade would not be adjusted. Literally hundreds of scarce hours were wasted on this appeal "that could not possibly fail", at a time when the burden of difficult Master's level subjects meant that every hour wasted was a serious cost. And yet at the end of it, my friend had nothing to show for it, other than a bruised ego.

This kind of thing, I'm under the impression that it happens a lot. For myself, I never took things quite so far, and yet I too have had similar experiences. I will give the most recent:

To object to an exam grade at my current institution, you have to do a lot:

• You have to work out how to go through the process. It turns out that "applying for feedback" is how you do it objection. But nobody tells you this. The phrases "object to a grade" and "dispute a grade" do not appear on the Monash website, nor on the specialized faculty subsites. Mainly what you get is endless talk of "feedback". If you email the relevant customer service team and ask them outright if this is the right way to mount an objection, you receive a cheery non-answer that specifically does not answer your question:

Hi [name omitted]

Thanks for your enquiry.

If you've already completed Stage 2 of the exam viewing process and have further questions, you can proceed to Stage 3 for further feedback by completing the online application form, giving reasons to support your request.

We'll go through all the submitted requests and forward them on to the respective chief examiners if we determine the reasons are strong enough for further feedback.

Have a good day!

regards

[name omitted]

• Once you've worked out that "applying for feedback" is the way you make such claims, you're faced with clicking a checkbox that says that if you miss your exam you viewing session, you will forfeit the right to see your exam script ever again, no matter what. It doesn't matter if your Dad died, your car broke down, or you had a stroke - nope, it's your own fault.

• When you get into the exam script viewing room, you have almost nothing to work with. You get to see what answers you submitted. But often are not told what the actual question was, or what you were graded out of. You are NEVER told the reasons for the grade you got. You're not allowed to take the exam script out of the room - all you can do is scrawl your objection on a bit of yellow paper they give you. That's assuming you've worked out at this point that you need to be building a case. If you think this is just the feedback stage, and the mount-an-objection stage will come later, you're in an awful lot of trouble.

• In my experience, the extent to which your comments receive fair consideration is based almost entirely on whether the lecturer likes you. If the lecturer likes you, they will consider your points carefully, and your grade will change by 4, e.g. from 91 to 95. If the lecturer does not like you, they will ignore your points, and your grade will change by 0, e.g. from 91 to ... well, 91.

I also think the voting patterns here bolster my point. In the original version of this question, I commented that universities try to make objecting your grades as hard as possible...

... and you're forced to put up with the stubbornness, small-mindedness and stupidity of human nature, essentially by design. And, though most professors are far from stupid, they can be every bit as stubborn and small-minded as anyone.

This is so true! Just look at the voting here. Because my answer offended some people, I ended up at -6, despite that my points were strong. Well, this is exactly what happens at university! If the lecturer likes you, your marks go up. If they don't, your objections are ignored. It's roughly the same pattern that plays out so frequently on this website.

Long story short, universities need to implement controls prevent this kind of thing. In my opinion, the average professor simply cannot be trusted to grade (or vote, for that matter) based on the strength of someone's argument, as opposed to their feelings about the other person's tone or character.

And, with that in mind, I'll leave the Addendum from my original post as some final food-for-thought.

Addendum. I think the voting patterns here bolster my point. For example, note that I fully addressed the points made in Ben I.'s first comment, yet the comment continues to be upvoted and the rebuttals ignored, essentially because I ruffled a few feathers. This is small-mindedness in a nutshell, and really emphasizes the importance of my final point, which I'll repeat again: Students shouldn't be punished just for making an appeal to fairness and offering some arguments in favor of their work, or for rebutting a weak rebuttal to their arguments. Nothing about this is okay.