Prof. Hoffman responded to my previous post. One of his commenters takes issue with the "fun stories" lead. I don't. In the big picture, these events aren't going to matter much at all. I've even gotten to the point where I laugh when telling the story of my Contracts II exam day meltdown (sort of a "What are these contract things of which you speak?" thing.)

Concurring Opinions: Reviewing Grading: Part II:

Fun stories, but I think that the number of downward corrections following exam review is exceedingly small, especially when considered as a proportion of the number of possible corrections. The social pressures against professors issuing such rulings are extreme (telling someone that they got a C face-to-face, after they were endowed with an original B, is much harder than giving them a C in the first place). Moreover, the procedural niceties are significantly more likely to be challenged in the case of a downward departure than an upward one, because the student will be kicking and screaming the whole way through the process. Therefore, we would predict that most times a professor spots the possibility of an error in the “curve’s favor” (instead of the student’s) he or she will simply ignore it. This is a windfall for the reviewed student, at the expense of the class.

To be sure, I didn't mean to suggest that grade lowering post-review is commonplace. Nor did I even intend to suggest it's the norm for when misreported grades are found. The school does make it very difficult for professors to change grades; at least, that's what professors and the student handbook tell us. Seeing as the Academic Standards Committee that makes the decisions is comprised of fellow professors, I do wonder how difficult it truly is. Basically, regrading of an exam will not happen at USF. Corrections for mathematical and reporting errors may occur if approved by the committee. (If I had the student handbook handy -- say, if the school would provide it in a digital form -- I would quote letter and verse.)

In my nearly 5.5 semesters here, I personally know of only one student who has had a grade lowered. I personally know of only one student who has had a grade raised. It just so happens that it was the same student in the same semester. And it was our first semester. As a result, those things have stuck with me, and I may well blow things out of proportion as a result.

I'd definitely recommend for those who wonder about their grades or wonder what they could have possibly done wrong to go and find out. I haven't done it often, not so much because of the one instance of grade lowering -- though that did keep me from seeing that prof that semester, and my worst grade in law school came from him the following semester in Contracts II -- but largely because it's been easy to figure out what I did right or wrong. I don't have many grades down the middle.