Grades and Misery

[Nytusse]

I'm in a Master's degree program looking toward applying to PhD programs, and I feel like the pressure is killing me.

I am really having a hard time figuring out how to get good grades in my program. I swear to God that the papers I think are great end up with the lowest grades.

I just got my last grade for this semester and it was a real shocker. I feel absolutely ill and I don't know how I am going to get past this.

Most people seem to have higher GPAs in their Master's degrees, but mine will be lower for sure. I am going from a small state school to the Ivy League so that may be expected, but since I will be applying to PhD programs at the worst possible time, the grades are just an obsession right now.

Ugh, I just needed to vent. And of course I get this crappy grade LAST so that I forget about all the good moments this year.

[mlle]

How low are your grades? I've gotten my fair share of B+'s and A-'s in my master's program. I had thought you get kicked out of grad school if you can't maintain a 3.0 average.

[Nytusse]

Nah, I wasn't complaining about BAD grades, just the freaking B+ issue. I suppose it could always be worse, but the constant B+ing is hard to handle when you are used to higher grades (as I'm sure most grads must experience).

I just can't believe how much of a rollercoaster ride grad school is. Right when I feel like I'm catching on, some other grade slips for some unfathomable reason. I get the impression that being in a Master's program and looking toward a doctorate is kind of like being in purgatory....grades just seem to matter SO much, especially since I don't particularly want to change schools.

It is so hard to figure out how competitive you really are, and it just gets frustrating when it seems like everyone else is getting straight As (although I imagine they aren't either!)

[Politicalgeek]

I'm sort of late to the "party" but I just wanted to say I totally feel you. I worked so much harder in my masters program than undergrad, and my GPA ended up being exactly the same! My UG was a humanities program at a SLAC and my masters was a quant-heavy policy program at an Ivy. In my masters program, grading was on the curve, and all the students who majored in econ and finance hogged the As. Me and my interdisciplinary humanities degree just couldn't compete. :roll: Now I want to do a social sciences PhD and I hope I can compete!

[Sigaba]

I'm in a Master's degree program looking toward applying to PhD programs, and I feel like the pressure is killing me.

I am really having a hard time figuring out how to get good grades in my program.

Nytusse--

Have you had the opportunity to discuss your performance and your expectations with your instructors? Some may be willing to tell you exactly what you need to do to improve your performance.

[Dwr]

I think grading graduate students is weird. I got horrible grades for most of my classes, but once done with them, produced work judged to be of remarkably high quality.  I also find the very idea of a master's programme difficult to understand (at least, in a theoretical field). You are either sitting there and learning (undergrad), or producing work which makes a theoretical contribution to the field. 

Edited April 4, 2017 by Dwr

[ThousandsHardships]

Do you have enough decent grades to counterbalance it? I had a C+ and a couple of B's on my graduate transcript, but I also had a number of A's and a couple of A+'s on my graduate transcript and excellent undergraduate grades despite doing up to twice the average per-semester course load at a top school renown for its difficulty. I had other issues about my application, but from the feedback I've gotten, I'm 100% certain that grades were not the reason I was rejected from the programs I was rejected from.

[fuzzylogician]

8 hours ago, ThousandsHardships said:

Do you have enough decent grades to counterbalance it? I had a C+ and a couple of B's on my graduate transcript, but I also had a number of A's and a couple of A+'s on my graduate transcript and excellent undergraduate grades despite doing up to twice the average per-semester course load at a top school renown for its difficulty. I had other issues about my application, but from the feedback I've gotten, I'm 100% certain that grades were not the reason I was rejected from the programs I was rejected from.

Note: this thread is from 2009. It's unlikely that the OP still needs any advice. 

[fuzzylogician]

8 hours ago, Dwr said:

I think grading graduate students is weird. I got horrible grades for most of my classes, but once done with them, produced work judged to be of remarkably high quality.  I also find the very idea of a master's programme difficult to understand (at least, in a theoretical field). You are either sitting there and learning (undergrad), or producing work which makes a theoretical contribution to the field. 

This, frankly, is a bizarre position. Do you think that you've learned all there is to learn in undergrad? There aren't any more advanced materials you might not have covered in undergrad that you might need to learn (and be graded on) as a graduate student? I highly doubt that. 

[Dwr]

4 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

This, frankly, is a bizarre position. Do you think that you've learned all there is to learn in undergrad? There aren't any more advanced materials you might not have covered in undergrad that you might need to learn (and be graded on) as a graduate student? I highly doubt that. 

It must be obvious that there is no such thing as learning all there is to learn. I believe learning and being graded are separate things. Getting review for your work until it is of publishable quality, yes, being given 'assignments' and then being graded on them, no. This also has to do what you start with after undergrad. Undergrads are treated as babies and given clear, dumbed-down solutions where what they need to be trained in is pointing out messy problems. You could take this back a long way. I find a lot of things about formal education bizarre.

[fuzzylogician]

11 hours ago, Dwr said:

It must be obvious that there is no such thing as learning all there is to learn. I believe learning and being graded are separate things. Getting review for your work until it is of publishable quality, yes, being given 'assignments' and then being graded on them, no. This also has to do what you start with after undergrad. Undergrads are treated as babies and given clear, dumbed-down solutions where what they need to be trained in is pointing out messy problems. You could take this back a long way. I find a lot of things about formal education bizarre.

The way undergrads are taught doesn't have to be the way you describe. And learning by having clear learning objectives, including assignments and grades, is very useful. Not everyone is good at learning everything themselves, and not everyone will have learned the relevant skills in their undergrad. Part of what grad courses do is begin to train you to teach yourself what you need to know, because there isn't always going to be a class for everything you need to know. Classes also useful in a variety of other (social and professional) aspects, e.g. getting an entire cohort together in the same room, so they get to know each other and learn to share ideas. If done well, collaborations will form that could inform research. And you as a student learn who I am as an instructor, you learn about my teaching style, about my interests, and about our compatibility as a potential advisor/advisee. In other words, coursework helps not only in leveling the playing field so that everyone in the program has some common shared knowledge that is driven by the interests and expertise of the faculty, but it also creates a community where ideas can be shared, people get to know each other better, and collaborations can be formed. Those things could, but often won't just emerge if everyone works in their office in isolation and don't get to interact with others. 

[ThousandsHardships]

12 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

The way undergrads are taught doesn't have to be the way you describe. And learning by having clear learning objectives, including assignments and grades, is very useful. Not everyone is good at learning everything themselves, and not everyone will have learned the relevant skills in their undergrad. Part of what grad courses do is begin to train you to teach yourself what you need to know, because there isn't always going to be a class for everything you need to know. Classes also useful in a variety of other (social and professional) aspects, e.g. getting an entire cohort together in the same room, so they get to know each other and learn to share ideas. If done well, collaborations will form that could inform research. And you as a student learn who I am as an instructor, you learn about my teaching style, about my interests, and about our compatibility as a potential advisor/advisee. In other words, coursework helps not only in leveling the playing field so that everyone in the program has some common shared knowledge that is driven by the interests and expertise of the faculty, but it also creates a community where ideas can be shared, people get to know each other better, and collaborations can be formed. Those things could, but often won't just emerge if everyone works in their office in isolation and don't get to interact with others. 

I agree with this. During my master's, it was really the assignments we had in my classes (look up a specific topic and present it to the class, read certain books, articles, and original sources), that introduced me to the various archives in my field, gave me an idea of where academics find the most recent or most read sources from, and instilled in me the intellectual curiosity that gave me the courage to apply to the PhD programs I did.

Edited April 6, 2017 by ThousandsHardships

[Dwr]

On 4/5/2017 at 11:33 PM, fuzzylogician said:

The way undergrads are taught doesn't have to be the way you describe. And learning by having clear learning objectives, including assignments and grades, is very useful. Not everyone is good at learning everything themselves, and not everyone will have learned the relevant skills in their undergrad. Part of what grad courses do is begin to train you to teach yourself what you need to know, because there isn't always going to be a class for everything you need to know. Classes also useful in a variety of other (social and professional) aspects, e.g. getting an entire cohort together in the same room, so they get to know each other and learn to share ideas. If done well, collaborations will form that could inform research. And you as a student learn who I am as an instructor, you learn about my teaching style, about my interests, and about our compatibility as a potential advisor/advisee. In other words, coursework helps not only in leveling the playing field so that everyone in the program has some common shared knowledge that is driven by the interests and expertise of the faculty, but it also creates a community where ideas can be shared, people get to know each other better, and collaborations can be formed. Those things could, but often won't just emerge if everyone works in their office in isolation and don't get to interact with others. 

Maybe the idea is better implemented in some systems than others and it has not been so in my experience. The only time I ever got a relatively good grasp of things and produced good work was when I was left completely alone.