Grading with accuracy and fairness can take a lot of time, which is often in short supply for college instructors. Students who aren’t satisfied with their grades can sometimes protest their grades in ways that cause headaches for instructors.
Whether your grades were strong or poor, it can be helpful to keep the focus on your real-world experiences, such as leadership roles in clubs, volunteer work, and internships. Be honest. It might feel tempting to fib and claim to have good grades even if your GPA wasn't strong.
My grades are not a good indication of what I achieved academically in college. Not because I got bad grades, but because the fieldwork and internships that I participated in were where I achieved the most academically. If you want to "see" my achievements, I will share my portfolio and tell you about my work experiences.
In the face of lower-than-expected grades, it’s only human to react by feeling disappointed with oneself. When you’re frequently receiving lower grades than you’d hoped for, you may start to feel depressed or defeated, and feel like giving up.
You can come right out and say: “After my mother got sick, I had a hard time focusing in school. My mother and I shared a particularly close relationship and being far away from her during her time of need prevented me from focusing in my classes. As a result, my grades saw an unfortunate drop.”
7 Ways to Address a Bad Grade on Your College ApplicationUse essays or short response questions wisely. ... Solicit recommendations. ... Accentuate your strengths through AP Tests. ... Craft a narrative. ... Study for the SAT/ACT. ... Target schools that allow for imperfect transcripts. ... Don't let things snowball.
You can mitigate low grades by mentioning your relevant work experience (internships, etc.), workshops or certifications, extra courses that you took, and excellent scores in standardized testing like GRE, GMAT, etc.
Contextualize the essay grade in terms of your academic record. If you are a straight-A student, mention the fact that you've never received a grade like this before. Mention any past instances when you got a lower grade than you thought you deserved, and how you improved your overall grade by the end of the term.
How To Explain Low Grades During A Fresher InterviewTake the honest road. The better way to approach this problem would be, to be honest, yet smart about why you scored low. ... Don't make excuses. ... Highlight your accomplishments. ... How you made a comeback. ... The credentials you earned.
Explain what went wrong, what obstacle you faced, and how you worked to overcome that challenge. Addressing the improvements you made (boosting your GPA, retaking a class, etc.) is an excellent strategy for your personal statement.
On your resume, rather than listing your overall GPA, list your GPA in your major instead – if it's considerably higher. For instance: “3.5 GPA in accounting coursework.” Or, if you had a low GPA the last year of college, but higher ones in the earlier years, than put the average over your four years in school.
Explain any family or personal situations that significantly affected your academic performance, if applicable. For example, if a loved one died during your time at school, and the death hindered your ability to do well in class, briefly discuss this fact on your cover letter.
Applicants should consider the following pointers when explaining poor academics in their medical school application:Only address major weaknesses.Don't blame others.End on a positive note.Highlight strengths that could make up for the weakness.
Take Responsibility and Offer an Explanation for the Low GPA.Get Recommendation Letters From Teachers and Counselors.Get Good Standardized Test Scores.Wait to Apply and Improve Your GPA.Consider Alternative Admissions Programs.Start at a Community College.
Individual Grade - Examination. Exam questions specifically target the group projects, and can only be answered by students who have been thoroughly involved in the project. may increase motivation to learn from the group project including learning from the other members of the group. may diminish importance of group work.
Individual submissions (allocated tasks or individual reports) are scored individually. The group members each receive the averageof these individual scores. may provide motivation for students to focus on both individual and group work and thereby develop in both areas. may be perceived as unfair by students.
stronger students may be unfairly disadvantaged by weaker ones and vice versa
may not be effective, students may be able to answer the questions by reading the group reports
1. Adopt a positive mental attitude. In the face of lower-than-expected grades, it’s only human to react by feeling disappointed with oneself.
Sometimes students underperform because they have simply lost the motivation to learn. It’s not surprising, when the pressure of exams and doing well at school takes away the enjoyment of learning. It’s easy to get so focused on achieving top grades that you forget that learning can actually be fun – and not only that, but it’s much easier to do well when you’re enjoying it. If studying has become a chore for you, it’s time to put the fun back into learning. You could do this by gamifying your studies, or by trying some of the ideas in our article on 15 ways to make studying less stressful.
If you’re prone to daydreaming in class, it’s time to start focusing on the here and now. Listen to what the teacher is saying rather than talking with friends or allowing your mind to wander. Don’t simply copy down what’s on the board without thinking about it; make sure you’ve understood it, make neat notes so that you can understand them when you come back to them (more on that later), and don’t be afraid to speak up if there’s something you don’t understand or want clarifying. It’s much easier to ask a teacher to explain something differently than it is to trawl through books trying to find a clearer explanation for yourself, and they won’t think less of you for asking.
It’s all too easy to misunderstand your own notes and fail to get a strong enough grasp of the topic. It’s imperative, therefore, that you produce good notes from each of your classes and from the books you use – notes that you can read, that are useful, and that are logically organised.
Distributing grades according to a normal curve was therefore considered as a solution to the subjective nature of grading and a way to minimize interrater differences in grading (Guskey, 1994). Others worried that measuring aptitude was different from measuring levels of classroom performance, which might not be normally distributed (Schneider and Hutt, 2013).
In brief, curved grading creates a competitive classroom environment, alienates certain groups of talented students, and often results in grades unrelated to content mastery. Curving is therefore not the fairest way to assign grades.
Grades can dampen existing intrinsic motivation, give rise to extrinsic motivation, enhance fear of failure, reduce interest, decrease enjoyment in class work, increase anxiety, hamper performance on follow-up tasks, stimulate avoidance of challenging tasks, and heighten competitiveness (Harter, 1978; Butler and Nisan, 1986; Butler, 1988; Crooks, 1988; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Even providing encouraging, written notes on graded work does not appear to reduce the negative impacts grading exerts on motivation (Butler, 1988). Rather than seeing low grades as an opportunity to improve themselves, students receiving low scores generally withdraw from class work (Butler, 1988; Guskey, 1994). While students often express a desire to be graded, surveys indicate they would prefer descriptive comments to grades as a form of feedback (Butler and Nisan, 1986).
By the early 1900s, 100-point or percentage-based grading systems were very common (Cureton, 1971). This period also saw an increased desire for uniformity in grading, and many expressed concerns about what grades meant from one teacher or institution to the next (Weld, 1917). Numerous studies of the period sought to understand and perfect grading systems (Cureton, 1971). Grading on a 100-point scale was found to be highly unreliable, with different teachers unable to assign consistent grades on papers in English, math, and history (Starch, 1913). Researchers felt that getting away from a 100-point scale and grading into only five categories (e.g., letter grades) could increase reliability (Finkelstein, 1913, p. 18). While it is unclear exactly when and why “E” grades disappeared from the letter grade scale, it seems possible that this push to use fewer categories resulted in an “A”–“F” scale with no “E” (“F” being retained, since it so clearly stood for “fail”). Others have conjectured that “E” was removed so students would not assume “E” stood for “excellent,” but whatever the reason, “E’s” apparently disappeared by the 1930s (Palmer, 2010).
They then suggest strategies for making grading more supportive of learning, including balancing accuracy-based and effort-based grading, using self/peer evaluation, curtailing curved grading, and exercising skepticism about the meaning of grades.
Conforming grades to a curve held the promise of addressing some of the problems surrounding grading by making the process more scientific and consistent across classrooms (Meyer, 1908). Immediately, even some proponents of curved grading recognized problems with comparing levels of aptitude in the population with levels of classroom achievement among a population of students. For a variety of reasons, a given classroom might not include a representative sample from the general population. In addition, teachers often grade based on a student's performance or accomplishment in the classroom —characteristics that differ in many ways from aptitude (Finkelstein, 1913). However, despite the reservations of some teachers and researchers, curved grading steadily gained acceptance throughout much of the 20th century (Schneider and Hutt, 2013).
The earliest forms of grading consisted of exit exams before awarding of a degree, as seen at Harvard as early as 1646 (Smallwood, 1935). Some schools also awarded medals based on competitions among students or held regular competitions to assign seats in class (Cureton, 1971). Given that universities like Yale and Harvard conducted examinations and elected valedictorians and salutatorians early in the 18th century, some scale of grading must have existed. However, the first official record of a grading system surfaces in 1785 at Yale, where seniors were graded into four categories: Optimi, second Optimi, Inferiores, and Perjores(Stiles, 1901, cited by Smallwood, 1935). By 1837, Yale was also recording student credit for individual classes, not just at the completion of college studies, using a four-point scale. However, these “merit marks” were written in code and hidden from students (Bagg, 1871).
Don't make excuses. If you did not get good grades in school, you'll want to explain why. But try to stay away from making excuses or blaming others for your grades (like a bad professor, for instance). Hiring managers won't respond well to someone who can't take responsibility.
Interviewers may be more inclined to ask this question if they know you have poor grades and are looking to see if you can explain them.
Don't go negative. Even if you didn't flourish academically in college, there's room to spin your response into something positive. You can talk about extracurricular or real-life learning. Or, you can describe how you were able to improve your grades over the course of your time in school. Don't make excuses.
If your grades were only average or below average, you have some reframing to do. The good news is that no college career is summed up entirely with grades. In fact, as far as employers are concerned, your grades won't matter at all once you have a few years of experience under your belt. Your goal right now is to show the hiring manager your skills and experience outside of your academic achievements.
It might feel tempting to fib and claim to have good grades even if your GPA wasn't strong. But it's easy for these lies to be found out. Employers may even ask for a copy of a college or high school transcript. Being discovered being deceptive can result in job offers being rescinded, and just isn't worth it.
Proficiency levels are the most common means of reporting state test data today. With proficiency-level data, students are grouped into cut-score ranges based on performance on the grade-level state tests. Most states use between three to five performance levels; for example, a state using five performance levels might look something like: 1) Advanced, 2) Proficient, 3) Approaching Proficient, 4) Basic, 5) Unsatisfactory. Both Smarter Balanced and PARCC are in the process of establishing initial performance levels. Even as states continue using proficiency levels in their data and accountability systems, there is a movement to shift to new models of data reporting and accountability that are focused on measuring student growth.
One of the weaknesses of the proficiency model is that its single-point-in-time “status” approach does not consider what level of knowledge and ability students bring with them and , consequently, cannot tell us how much learning has occurred. On the other hand, growth, because it is academic progress over time, does tell us how much learning has occurred from a baseline point. Thus, growth could be a fairer, more informative approach to measuring both individual and group performance. Consider, for example, these two students:
Gain Score models describe growth with simple differences or average gains over time.
Student Growth Percentile models consider thepercentile rank of current status in a reference group of students with similar past scores.
School reform is a critical, complex, and constantly evolving part of our overall education environment. As state standards, tests, and accountability all continue to evolve toward higher expectations of student performance, so does our method of reporting and evaluating student performance. Since the passing of the NCLB Act ...
So, growth has the potential to be a more accurate way of measuring how much individual or group academic development is occurring and, therefore, a fairer way of measuring what’s really happening.
If you are experiencing problems with certain subjects, you can always ask your teacher or peers for help after the class. Another option is to ask your parents if they can afford a private tutor for you .
1. Motivate yourself. If you are not satisfied with your grades, do not get down on yourself - try self-motivation instead. Believe in yourself and encourage yourself to stay focused on your work. Pick a goal or series of goals, and use that as your motivation.
It may be hard, especially if you have a shy personality, but participation will show your teacher that you do really care about their subject and want better grades. Teachers typically base the grades on various factors, and participation is one of them.
If you are preparing for a test or writing a research paper, it would be wise to break down your work into small chunks and allot work to a specific time periods. To avoid stress, do not procrastinate and wait until the last night before the test. 11. Take care of your health.
Sometimes, group studying can help the members of the group motivate each other and be more productive. If such style of studying suits you, then you can organize such groups or become a member of a group that already exists. You can get together for studying after classes or on weekends.
Find a quiet working place to handle your homework in a distraction-free environment. Put your phone aside or at least mute all notification sounds so you are not distracted. You can also use apps that lock a phone for a certain time period.
Use one notebook per class and do not let your desk become cluttered with papers and stationery . Try to clean up your desk regularly. This helps tremendously with limiting distractions.
If you have a class rank, colleges will look at it. If your high school uses class rank and reports it on your transcript or in your secondary school report, the colleges you apply to will see it. That being said, they consider class rank within the context of your school. If you go to a very small high school, class rank is not going to mean as much. Similarly, if you go to a very competitive school, they will take that into account when considering your rank. They will also pay attention to other factors that could affect your rank. For instance, if you transferred high schools after 10 th grade, that could affect your rank – so it is important to provide information about special circumstances to the colleges you’re applying to.
When evaluating your academic performance “by the numbers,” colleges care about so much more than just your final GPA. As you know, many high schools have different ways of calculating GPAs, and have different weighting systems.
The most important thing to know about how colleges evaluate your academic record is that it is all about holistic review. Colleges look at your entire academic picture within your particular context. More important than any one particular aspect of your academic record, colleges care about how all of the academic pieces fit together.
That’s OK. If your school doesn’t have any advanced course options, the colleges you’re applying to won’t penalize you for that. Your counselor will send a profile of your high school to every college you apply to so they’ll know what course options are available to you.
Colleges notice grade trends. Let’s say you’re getting lots of A’s now, but your grades at the beginning of high school were n’t so great. Colleges will notice that you have an upward grade trend, and perhaps be more forgiving of your weaker grades earlier on. Similarly, if your grades were great early in high school, and have gone down in 11 th grade, colleges will notice that as well. If there is a legitimate excuse or reason for your grades to decline, such as an extended illness, it could be worth mentioning in your application.
If you take 12 credits in a semester, which is a typical full-time requirement, and drop a class, you fall below full-time status . This may impact your eligibility for future financial aid, or you may be required to pay back your funding source for the tuition and books for the dropped course. Failing a course may also put financial aid in jeopardy, if it puts you under a minimum grade point average requirement. And if you drop under the institution's grade point average requirement, you may be forced to drop out.
Withdrawing from a class means that at some point within your school-prescribed timeline, you remove yourself officially from the class roster. This may have implications on your student status and financial aid, but it also means that you don't receive an official grade for the course other than a "W" for withdrawal.
When contemplating a withdrawal or completion decision, it is often best to visit with a financial aid counselor. In some situations, mitigating factors contribute to student struggles. Personal or family medical problems, for instance, can impede your success in school. You often have the ability to appeal your special circumstances to the college to retain financial aid eligibility. Veterans programs and other assistance programs outside of the college may also consider extenuating circumstances.
Sometimes, it takes a week or so to realize the mismatch.
Failing a course may also put financial aid in jeopardy, if it puts you under a minimum grade point average requirement. And if you drop under the institution's grade point average requirement, you may be forced to drop out.
You can retake the course, if required, at a later point when you are more prepared. A withdrawal also looks better than an F on your transcript if you submit it for graduate school or to a future employer.
The real dilemma becomes apparent after several weeks of class, when you don't have a tuition refund option. Instead, you may have a choice between withdrawing by the final drop date or finishing out the term with an "F." Withdrawing doesn't affect your GPA. You can retake the course, if required, at a later point when you are more prepared. A withdrawal also looks better than an F on your transcript if you submit it for graduate school or to a future employer.