Not doing as well as I thought in a course?

[confusedgradadmit]

Hello all,

We've received all of our grades except for the final report (worth 40%). I thought I was doing pretty well, but even though I have an 82.5% raw score, the class average is 88%... Is it possible that I could fail even with a mark that should be in the A-range?

I'm at the University of Alberta, and our minimum pass for grad students is a C+, but we also need to keep a B- overall GPA (I have no scholarships that require a higher GPA than that, at least not yet).

The professor has stated that grading will be done as follows: He will sort the class by raw score, and identify clusters of similar scores, assigning a grade to each cluster (so as not to give someone with a 92.5% score an A, while giving someone with a 93% score an A+). Unfortunately, that gives me no way to predict how my grade will turn out, but since I'm below the (unusually high) class average, it doesn't look good... Plus, if the average is so high, the spread of the score is probably also pretty low, which makes it even worse...

Edited December 15, 2012 by confusedgradadmit

[Quant_Liz_Lemon]

Ask the prof.

[confusedgradadmit]

Well, yes, but I didn't want to sound like an undergrad lol.

I think he'd have a hard time justifying it on appeal, anyway, if he gave someone a failing grade when they learned over 80% of the material.

Edited December 16, 2012 by confusedgradadmit