You must go to my school. My class average was 58%, two people in the 80s (I was one) and one in the 90s (teacher loved this person).

That would be awful, but to be fair, it's not always the teachers fault. I admit there is some subjectivity in English when it comes to marks as teachers have different criteria, however it is our jobs as students to know that criteria and to meet or surpass it. A sincere tip, if you're currently in English right now, teachers love it when you participate in their classes- when you raise your hand to add something that'll fuel discussion. After all, your mark does not only consist of evaluated tests and essays, those are only one facet in which a teacher may observe learning, in fact the other facet is conversation- don't think for a second that that would not have any affect on your mark. The most successful student is the one who is always engaged

I'm getting the idea that you may even be wondering that English is pointless, seeing that you're going into life sci, but don't fall into that trap. English will teach you what Gr. 12 Math and Science will not. It will teach you careful analysis, the ability to look at something and see more to it, the ability to pick up patterns and trends and to understand the implications of them... Dmitri Mendeleev, a 19th century Russian chemist, did it. He saw a trend when he arranged columns in order to group elements with similar properties, and was able to see the implications- and created the first modern periodic table. With it he predicted with great accuracy the existence and properties of elements which would be discovered a century later.

In brief, all I wanted to say was that even if you have a hard teacher, you'll just have to work a bit harder, because I'm sure it'll get much worse in university- especially when some professors literally have received no training when it comes to being a teacher.

I think it is fair, however that is just my opinion. I've always avoided thinking that some teachers were more worse than others. In my opinion, if I were to fall into that mindset, i would turn that teacher into a scapegoat, one who'll take the blame and cause me to ignore my own shortcomings.

In any case, it is not worthwhile to be thinking that you've lost the random lottery of life and received this very hard teacher. Whether or not it is fair is totally irrelevant- absurdity is one of the cornerstones of existential thinking after all.

EDIT: Sorry I keep using 'you' but the person whom I am referring to is your friend.

Is it unfair when some teachers or some schools mark harder than other teachers and other schools? Yes, of course. You know what though? To use one of the most cliche overused phrases ever, life ain't fair. This kind of thing happens in high school, and it will continue to happen in university, in the workplace and throughout adult life. So you just gotta suck it up. Guarantee when you get to university you'll find that sometimes one TA grades way harder than other TAs in the same course or another section of the same course has a way higher average. You've started three separate threads to gripe about teachers. I don't mean to harsh, but I think you need to hear this: grow up, let it go and move on. Your attitude of griping about every perceived unfairness will not serve you well in university. Professors will continue to sometimes grade unfairly or have make-up policies for tests that don't seem compassionate, but you have to just suck it up and deal with it.

The hypothetical scenario you've set up of someone not getting into university because of one grade is a strawman. It's the same thing as kids in university who are already on academic probation because of a entire series of mediocre/low marks... yet when they get a D in a class they go whine to the professor that the "D" in that particular class is the reason they're getting kicked out of school. The truth is though, it's never just one grade. Same thing goes for this scenario. If the student truly has mid 90s in every other class, and a 78 or 80 in English, it's extremely unlikely that they wouldn't get into the program of their choice. Now if they have say 2 90s and then a collection of unremarkable 70s and 80s, then it's possible they wouldn't get in but the one grade in English wouldn't really be to blame.

That's life. It sucks but things like that will continue to happen as you get older. If it really bothers people that much then they should do AP/IB, where there's standardized testing and grading.

Okay, well it's not even close to the situation you described. Health Science requires a 90% average and the student doesn't have 80s in all their other courses, they have over 90 in all of them, so you trying to say that it's not just English is false. These students have marks of about 92 in all their other courses except English (78%), that makes their average 89.7% - that's not enough for Health Science. But you're right, life is unfair, but this isn't the difference between an 87% and an 88% average or a 0.1 difference in your GPA, this is the reason someone may not even be considered for their dream program because of one mark (that is not even that low - 78 is a great english mark) even though these people who've worked so hard to achieve their dream of admission to Health Science by putting hours and hours of effort to get 90+ in all their courses, volunteering, writing essay after essay for their supplementary, only to not even be considered because their English mark is 78 instead of an 80. I think if ANY of us were in their position, I don't think we would just brush it off, saying life is unfair.

lol yeah, but it's semester 2, too late to take it in night school, online, and this teacher was a brand new teacher too, so it's not like they had a heads up.

Yeah, I know, but these students didn't think they would get 90s in English, but they weren't expecting it to be below 80 and there's only 2-3 students who got over 80 out of 30 students and compared to other classes, that's a very low percentage. It just sucks for them that they might get screwed.

The teacher is responsible…?

Are you sure?

There is part of me that becomes skeptical when a teacher is made a villain.
A teacher should be hard. The course should be a challenge. Otherwise the teacher is not doing any service to their students. It could be that there are other students more deserving of a seat than you. It could be that you did not put enough time and labour into English. Teachers are anything but impartial – your appearance could have affected your grade.

I do not know. But that is life.

Communication is the bridge between people. English is going to be one of the greatest tools in the toolbox. Your command of English is part of your overall presentation – and people judge you on your presentation. I know people with exceptional grades in mathematics and science. They are intelligent and they will do fine. But there are not divergent thinkers.

These people might be smart – but there is room for improvement.
The institution you get your degree from is not going to define you.

The point isn't the exact number of their grades, the point is that you can't possibly argue that it's just one grade since all grades are weighted equally in the top 6. Firstly, I highly doubt at a program would automatically reject someone with an 89.7% without at least looking at their application.. 90% may be the recommended average but it's not an absolute. Additionally, like someone mentioned above, if your friends truly have averages of 89.7% then perhaps they should find a way to recoup that 0.3% difference by raising one of their 92s to a 93.. that would be the adult way to problem-solve and figure out the situation rather than blaming it entirely on one grade.

Honestly, everyone in this thread was just trying to offer you some honest perspective but now you are getting even more defensive and acting as though people in this thread are not being compassionate or fair.. you seem to be one of those people that perceive unfairness against you everywhere you go. It's up to you whether you want to listen or not, but we are trying to tell you that such an attitude will not serve you well in adult life. No one is denying the fact that some teachers mark unfairly or far too hard which results in disparities between schools and classes, so I don't know why you keep trying to prove your point about how hard your teacher is. We believe you that your teacher is hard. What we are trying to tell you is that the adult way to go about solving such a situation is to keep a positive attitude and be proactive about trying to find your own ways to solve the situation rather than bitching about unfair teachers.

If I were in this position, and indeed I have been several times at university, I actually would just do my best to move on and brush it off and if I was moping I wouldn't be offended if my friends reminded me that life's not fair. There will be times at work when someone else gets a raise and you don't, times when the professor picks another student to be their research assistant, times when you won't get that shcolarship because your grades are just a percentage too low (because you got an 82 rather than an 84 in one class) and times when the grading won't be fair. You can't fight every battle. I know this will sound trite, but there are Canadians in our own country who are hungry, and don't even access to clean water, basic health care or warm shelters. There are people in other countries who are still stoned for being gay. Personally, these are the unfair things that I would rather save my energy up to fight over, not tough grading in one high school class. I know when you're in high school it's hard to have perspective and everything feels like life and death, but take it from people who are older - all of this high school drama over grades and tough teachers will seem so, so incredibly insignificant and silly just a few years from now.