Did Your Student Receive Midterm Grades?

Once midterm exams are over, many students will receive their midterm grades.  At some institutions students will receive grades, if they receive them at all, individually from instructors.  At other institutions, there may be something more formal.  Students may receive actual letter grades, or they may receive something to indicate satisfactory or unsatisfactory grades.

There are some important things to remember about midterm grades – and to help your student remember in order to make sense – and productive use – of these mid-semester grades.

• Midterm grades will go to the student, not to the parents.  Like final semester grades, the FERPA (Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act) law gives access to educational information to the student once he or she turns 18 or attends post secondary school.
• Midterm grades are usually not a part of the student’s permanent record
• One of the worst things that a student can do is to ignore her midterm grades.
• Midterm grades usually come at about the midpoint in the semester, but this may not be the midpoint in the work for the course.  Your student may have more work ahead than is already completed.
• If your student questions a grade, or receives any grade that is less than satisfactory, he should make an appointment to talk to the professor.  Midterm grades are meant as an opportunity to encourage your student to open a conversation with the professor.
• If your student’s midterm grades are satisfactory, congratulations!  She should know that she is on the right track.
• If the midterm grades are not what your student hoped for, this is a good time to take stock and think about what may not be working.  There is still a half semester of work to turn things around.  This is time for some honest assessment, not a time for excuses. 
• Your student may need to consider whether withdrawing from a class may make sense.  If one grade is very low, withdrawing from that class might give him more time to focus his energies on doing well in his other classes. 
• Your student may want to keep midterm information in mind as she considers her choice of classes for the following semester.  She may need to think about whether or not to take advanced classes, or particular instructors. 

It is important to keep midterm grades in perspective.  They provide valuable information to students at an important point in the semester.  Parents can help students interpret the information and put it in perspective, but then they need to step back once again to allow the student to follow through with whatever he needs to do.