Why would prof grade this way

[kathy2015123]

I had asked prof if he could grade my essay earlier due to school reasons. He then gave a 80%....but also said it might be 82% depending on other students' essays. Why would prof grade this way? Everyone can choose own essay topics.....we didn't have to choose from list.

[fuzzylogician]

This is far too vague for us to give you useful answers.

 

I can only guess, but when grading I may sometimes decide not to take off points for a mistake that repeats across a large proportion of the students in the class. Like, if a lot of people misunderstood what a question was asking for, or had a different definition for some term than I was expecting. If it happens very often, I may decide it's a legitimate confusion and not something points should be deducted for. For an essay, if I find that a lot of students did something that deviates from my expectation in some way, e.g. in style or structure, I may lean towards not penalizing it. It's hard to guess what your professor has in mind here--maybe there is a particular issue that cost you 2 points that he is already seeing in some other papers and so he may end up not deducting points for. This is only a guess, though. I'd suggest asking him. 

[BiochemMom]

When I grade papers as a GTA, I always make sure I grade evenly. I have had to go back and credit the first few papers after realizing I was grading less harshly at the end to make sure it was an even grading distribution. All the profs I've talked to about grading (and I have several times asked random profs who teach the subject I'm IOR for how they would grade something) have said they do the same.

[DTY]

Same here, when I grade, sometimes I have to go back to earlier papers and adjust their grades based on how the entire class performed on the assignment in order to make sure everyone is graded fairly.