CS 475: Grading Policies
If you have any questions or concerns, please ask in lecture, during office hours, or on Piazza.
Regrade requests
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Regrade requests can be submitted directly within Gradescope. We encourge students who have questions or concerns about their grades to talk with the course staff before submitting a regrade request. However, no grades will be changed in any student's presence.
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Regrade requests for homeworks and midterms can be submitted up to two weeks after the graded work is returned. Regrade requests for the final exam can be submitted up to three weeks after the exam scores are released. Late regrade requests will be denied.
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All regrade requests must include a brief written justification for the request. (Fill in the appropriate textbox on Gradescope.) Good justifications include the following:
- My answer agrees with the posted solution, but I still lost points.
- My answer is correct, even though it does not match the posted solution.
- There is no explanation for my grade.
- The official solution is incorrect; here's a counterexample.
Regrade requests with poor or missing justifications will be denied.
- We can only grade what you actually submitted. You cannot get a higher grade by explaining what you meant, either in person or in writing; your original submission must stand on its own.
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If you submit a regrade request, we will regrade the submitted problem from scratch. The TAs will regrade homework problems; the instructor will regrade exam problems. Your grade may go down.
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We will consider regrade requests for the final exam only if a successful regrade would change the student's overall course grade.
Final course grades
We will determine final course grades as follows.
- Compute raw totals from homework, quizzes, and exam scores. Course work is weighted as follows.
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10% Quizzes:
We will drop your lowest 2 quiz scores.
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20% Homework:
We drop your lowest homework score.
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70% Exams:
There will be two midterm exams, each worth 20% of your raw total, and a cumulative final exam worth 30% of your raw total.
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Exceptions:
Any forgiven homework or exams will be treated as though they were never assigned; we will drop the same fraction of each student's unforgiven scores. On the other hand, we will not drop zeros that result from cheating offenses.
- Remove outliers and exceptional cases.
- Anyone with an adjusted total over 95%. These students automatically get an A+. This rule typically applies to the top 2-3% of the class. I reserve the right to lower the 95% cutoff.
- Anyone with an adjusted total below 40%, or who has submitted less than half of the homework, or who otherwise does not appear to be making a good faith effort in the class. I reserve the right to give these students failing grades; however, this is not the only way to fail! This rule typically applies to the bottom 1% of the class.
- Determine letter-grade cutoffs from the undergraduate raw totals. Outliers and graduate students are excluded from the cutoff computation to avoid unfairly skewing the curve for undergraduates. The mean is the center of the B range, and each standard deviation is worth 3/4 of a letter grade. For example, the B+/A- cutoff is 2/3 standard deviations above the mean, and the B-/C+ cutoff is 2/3 standard deviations below the mean.
- Compute final letter grades (for non-outliers) from adjusted totals.
- In particular, grades for graduate students are determined by comparing their adjusted total to the undergraduate curve.
- Adjust grades upwards at the instructor's whim.