Got a B+ during the first semester of my MA program, freaking out

[Philosophyfear]

Just some context, I am in an MA program at school ranked on the PG rankings but on the lower end and I am funded. I was really hoping to get into decently ranked PhD programs, and now I feel liked I messed that all up. I got a B on the first paper (which I felt was a little unfair) and I turned in the 2nd one and I guess I didn't do good enough to bump it to an A-. My other two grades were As. The class is far from my AOI. I'm pretty sure the school I go to does not inflate grades; I know a lot of students got A-/B+s on papers and even a few B/B-s. 

So I guess the questions I have are: How concerned should I be? Will this significantly impact my ability to get into decent PhD programs?  My dream is to have a career in philosophy and I worked really hard to have an almost perfect undergrad GPA and I feel like I just ruined it all. 

 

Thanks for any info

[Olórin]

1. Your professor is an asshole and should know better than to do something like this to a student.

2. Other people will recognize that fact. 

3. People know that a B+ in grad school means the professor failed to support students. 

4. As long as the other grades are As and continue to be As, you don’t have anything to worry about. 

[Glasperlenspieler]

5 hours ago, Olórin said:

1. Your professor is an asshole and should know better than to do something like this to a student.

How did you get this from the OP?

5 hours ago, Olórin said:

2. Other people will recognize that fact.

What makes you think that?

5 hours ago, Olórin said:

3. People know that a B+ in grad school means the professor failed to support students. 

I really don't think this is always the case. And even if it's true that all instances of a B+ are ones in which the professor did a poor job (which again, I really don't think is the case), then it's certainly not the case that "people know" this.

5 hours ago, Olórin said:

4. As long as the other grades are As and continue to be As, you don’t have anything to worry about. 

This seems right. 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Glasperlenspieler

[Sigaba]

5 hours ago, Olórin said:

3. People know that a B+ in grad school means the professor failed to support students. 

This generalization is overly broad, IMO. Sometimes, graduate students don't work hard enough to get the grade they want despite the best professor's best efforts.

[syn]

On 12/18/2019 at 6:55 AM, Olórin said:

1. Your professor is an asshole and should know better than to do something like this to a student.

2. Other people will recognize that fact. 

3. People know that a B+ in grad school means the professor failed to support students. 

4. As long as the other grades are As and continue to be As, you don’t have anything to worry about. 

This is quite honestly a terrible response, with the only thing being remotely accurate is #4.

1. Professors don't want you to fail. But they also want you to do quality work. Ultimately you received a B+ because that's what the quality of your work indicated. I don't know if you did this or not, but you might consider going to your professor's office hours and discussing it with them. I have a professor who tends to look very kindly on students who may struggle at times, but who put forth the effort by coming to office hours and discussing it. I recommend new students in my program go to his office hours at least four times a semester, even if you're doing well. It's good to have that face time with a potential future letter writer, especially if the professor is in your AOI.

2. No they won't. They may, however, wonder what led the professor not to give you an A-/A, where students are expected to place. This is a red flag, especially if it's in your AOI.

3. Wrong. It's more likely they'll think your professor is not confident in your ability to be a professional philosopher, you don't have the argumentative chops, and your writing is sloppy or bad. If you get another sub-par grade, I'd expect your chances of moving on would be very slim.

4. Might be right, depending on if the class is 1. logic, or 2. in your AOI. I've heard if it's logic, committees tend to overlook Bs. They know it's difficult. If it's in your AOI, however, this is a red flag.

If you want to continue getting B+s, go with Olorin's response. If you want to ensure you don't get another B+, the above are some things I've kept in mind. Go to office hours. Ask questions. Get regular check-ins. Take very seriously classes in your AOI. Work on your writing. Apply to conferences, even if just grad ones, to validate your ideas and writing.

Good luck!

[Olórin]

A little hesitant to get into an internet argument, but I do think giving a B+ to a 1st semester MA student is an asshole move. I would never try to tank someone’s transcript like that or invoke a logic that made doing so look ordinary (as if grades reflect merit in the first place, just look at gendered distribution of grades in philosophy if you’re doubtful).  I’ve never come across someone getting a B+ in grad school without having other complications in the class. And look at the anguish it caused this person, you think a nice professor does that to someone, knowing they would feel the weight of their future so heavily when they saw a B+? What is this professor trying to prove by knocking people down?

Also, the poster said that a lot of people got sustained low grades in the class, which means the professor failed to support student learning. Any teacher knows that. 

[philosopuppy]

Just want to chime in to say that there are people in my (very strong, well-regarded) MA program getting B+/B grades, and it definitely seems to track abilities and work ethic. I mean, who the hell am I to decide who's good and who's not, but just fwiw.

I also know that there are a bunch of people from my program who got a B or B+ once and still got into really good PhD programs.

[maxhgns]

My experience has been that B-level grades in graduate school are warning signs. They're not catastrophic, and unless your transcript is full of them, they won't scupper your chances at a PhD. Nor are they, as has been suggested, grossly unfair. They're just an indication that you need to step up your game in some way.

(For my part, I'm a firm believer that it's fair game for instructors to use the full range of grades at any level. That said, I would expect graduate students to do better in general, because they've made it through a pretty selective process which is supposed to snap up the strongest students. But that doesn't mean that the students in question don't still have a lot to learn. You don't come to graduate school ready-made into a philosopher.)

[twillow]

Interesting, but in my (ranked) MA program, it is incredibly difficult and rare to get an A. Even the person with the highest GPA in my cohort has a B and  B+. I have had classes of 30 people where NO ONE gets an A. I have a couple of B+s, and a 3.65 GPA. I just completed my PhD applications to some very selective schools, and my letter-writers did not think it would be a problem for me at all.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

I would be pretty worried, especially if the course is in your area of specialization. In my experience, graduate grades are quite inflated, and tend to be given according to the following criteria:

A: Satisfactory to excellent work (equivalent to an undergraduate B through-A+)

A-: Not quite satisfactory work (equivalent to an undergraduate B or B-)

B+: Unsatisfactory work (equivalent to an undergraduate C- through C+)

B: Very unsatisfactory work (equivalent to an undergraduate D through D+)

B- or below: Why are you even in this program?

 

As has been said, graduate-level grades are mainly the professor's means of communicating their satisfaction with your work to you. An A means 'no need to work harder', and can cover anything from 'good enough' to 'incredible stuff'; an A- means 'work harder', a B or B+ means 'you need to be working much harder'; and a B- or less means 'you are clearly not fit for this profession'. I don't know why the grading scale is compressed into the upper-end like this, but it is. Perhaps it's because, unlike undergraduates, almost no graduate students simply fail to attend class or turn in assignments. So we are all getting maximum participation points, which raises the lowest possible grade quite a bit. But whatever the reason, this is more or less how it works. 

I don't mean to give you a counsel of despair. But, at least in my program, a B+ would be a substantial mark on your record that would signal quite clearly that you had a bad semester. Other programs may of course work differently.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Coconuts&Chloroform

[Duns Eith]

I think this is the reason for letter-writers to fill out short surveys like "what percentile is this student's performance?" that way they can compare apples to apples a little bit better.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

On 12/21/2019 at 1:10 PM, syn said:

4. Might be right, depending on if the class is 1. logic, or 2. in your AOI. I've heard if it's logic, committees tend to overlook Bs. They know it's difficult. If it's in your AOI, however, this is a red flag.

 

On the whole, I think that your comment is spot-on, but I'm not too sure of this.

As I understand things, logic grades are like a second GRE: adcoms view them as a test of your intellectual capacity for rigorous and formal work, and if yours are not As, AdComs will be likely to think that, frankly, you do not have the intellectual capacity for professional philosophy. I could be wrong, but everyone I've spoken to has told me that it is very important to have good grades in logic.

[syn]

1 hour ago, Duns Eith said:

I think this is the reason for letter-writers to fill out short surveys like "what percentile is this student's performance?" that way they can compare apples to apples a little bit better.

There was a good thread about this over on Cocoon. It seemed many respondents said they're inclined to lie on many of those, or say they simply don't have the info to respond to it accurately. So I wouldn't count on it.

[syn]

1 minute ago, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

On the whole, I think that your comment is spot-on, but I'm not too sure of this.

As I understand things, logic grades are like a second GRE: adcoms view them as a test of your intellectual capacity for rigorous and formal work, and if yours are not As, AdComs will be likely to think that, frankly, you do not have the intellectual capacity for professional philosophy. I could be wrong, but everyone I've spoken to has told me that it is very important to have good grades in logic.

I think you're probably right. After all, just to be honest, if it's between you and someone else who got better grades in logic, and especially if your program has a logic requirement (likely all), then I'd certainly say it's always better to have done well than worse.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

1 minute ago, syn said:

I think you're probably right. After all, just to be honest, if it's between you and someone else who got better grades in logic, and especially if your program has a logic requirement (likely all), then I'd certainly say it's always better to have done well than worse.

This is a good point: if programs take logic so seriously that they require it, why would they accept any but the best students in logic?

I would say to OP that this grade is a serious problem that may put top-ranked programs out of his reach. It may not, of course, but whether or not it does will depend on how much he strengthens the rest of his application. The students being admitted to the top-ten programs likely all have 4.0s, for the very good reason that 4.0 grades are a floor for top-tier students, not a ceiling. 4.0 covers everything from a fine student in the department to the very best, and top-tier programs want the very best. OP will need to have a phenomenal sample and very good letters of rec in order to make up for this grade. Or he will have to be content with a lower-ranked program. Not nice to say, but that's the reality.

[Duns Eith]

21 hours ago, syn said:

There was a good thread about this over on Cocoon. It seemed many respondents said they're inclined to lie on many of those, or say they simply don't have the info to respond to it accurately. So I wouldn't count on it.

I read that too. I forget who said that a professor was known for inflating them. Like, baldly says the "the next quine" or "the next kripke" and makes every student their top student.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

On 1/17/2020 at 5:31 PM, Duns Eith said:

I read that too. I forget who said that a professor was known for inflating them. Like, baldly says the "the next quine" or "the next kripke" and makes every student their top student.

Wow, how unimaginative. What about 'the next Parmenides' or 'the next Berkeley'?

[Marcus_Aurelius]

"All my students are equally the best because change is an illusion!"

[psstein]

On 1/17/2020 at 5:31 PM, Duns Eith said:

I read that too. I forget who said that a professor was known for inflating them. Like, baldly says the "the next quine" or "the next kripke" and makes every student their top student.

That's pretty common in the US, sadly. This is one of the several elements where I think the UK system far superior. 

US letters have to gush with enthusiasm about how the student in question is truly the next Popper/Kuhn/Feyerbrand/whatever. UK letters are much more terse and will often say something like "this student was at the level I expected of a graduate student."