Contesting Your Grade on a Paper
Contesting the grade your teaching assistant has given you on a paper should be a last resort. Before contesting your grade, you must meet with your TA and discuss the paper. Listen open-mindedly to what your TA has to say. Let him or her explain to you why you received the grade, and more importantly, what's expected in the papers for this course and how to improve your work for the next assignment (if there is one).
If you remain convinced that your grade was not correct, you may contest it with me. However, to do so, you must follow this procedure:
- You must submit to me the original graded paper with your TA's comments on it.
- Along with the paper, you must submit a letter (max. one page) in which you explain why you believe that your paper received the wrong grade given the published grading standards for this course.
I will read your cover letter, and if and only if the letter makes a convincing case that the announced standards for the course were not applied correctly will I read the paper and re-grade it. Note: I will re-grade the paper. If I feel, after reading it, that the teaching assistant gave too high a grade, I will lower it.
Why are my policies on contesting grades so restrictive? The teaching assistants are well trained and have coordinated their grading with both me and the other TA's. It is unlikely that they have made an error. Not impossible, however. So, I want to give you a legitimate avenue for contesting your grade, but I don't want students fishing for higher grades.