Dealing with Arguably Legitimate Exam Gripes: A Possible Pareto Improvement.

Students sometimes have heart-felt and arguably legitimate complaints about exam grading. This note suggests a strategy for dealing in a serious, judicious, and seemingly fair and responsive way with such complaints. The suggested strategy allows the professor to take such complaints seriously, without giving him/her the reputation as an easy mark. Moreover, it uses a characteristic of letter-grade systems to lower the transactions costs of dealing seriously with such complaints. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.