UofT won’t admit to delays in Fall term grade posting; students suspect otherwise
Olivia Dans was happy to have completed the first semester of her sophomore year, barring one lingering stress: waiting for her fall term marks.
“They definitely took longer to come out compared to last year,” said Dans, majoring in Psychology and Cinema Studies. “My friends at other universities received their marks prior to the start of winter break, so they were able to enjoy their time off without constantly checking their school’s online portal.” The last of her grades were posted the day before classes resumed.
Dans’ experience is not unique among those reported to The Strand. Students say that what they suspect to be a later-than-usual release of fall term grades affected their stress levels, grad school applications, and ability to plan winter term classes.
UofT did not directly respond to a question from The Strand about whether marks were released at later dates compared to previous years, but a spokesperson told us, “It is not unusual to experience delays with the release of grades for some courses each year due to a variety of reasons such as illness or technical issues.”
They added that “most divisions require instructors to submit grades within five to ten business days from the date the exam was written,” before departments authorize grades and administrators upload them online. The different programs, campuses, and faculties all have varying time frames for final mark releases, which are usually reported on associated websites.
For many, the wait for winter term marks has even punctured into the new semester. Student Ishika Rishi, co-poetry editor of The Strand, said she “took four classes. Two of them came back around January 4, one of them came back on January 11, and from one of them, I’ve heard nothing,” as of January 13.
“The ones that I got later were the ones that I needed to finish my minor, and for both of those classes I was a little nervous about my grade anyways. It was an impending doom, like when is this going to come?” Rishi currently checks for updates twice daily, saying “it’s the first thing I do when I wake up.”
Discourse on the topic has also sprouted on social media platforms frequented by UofT students. On r/UofT, the school’s main Reddit forum with 95.3 thousand subscribers, two of the top 25 posts from the first week of classes were about not receiving course marks in a timely manner. Some students also say that receiving marks after the start of the winter term has affected their course selection.
One sophomore psychology major, who requested anonymity to protect her professional reputation, told The Strand, “I wasn’t sure whether I would pass my neuroscience class or not, and I would have had to change my plans for my second semester, depending on whether I’d be retaking the class or taking it in the summer… I would check every couple of days or so.”
A UofT spokesperson from the UofT Media Relations team also told The Strand that students with these issues “are advised to meet with an academic advisor in their faculty/program. Most divisions have a course change period at the start of the term to allow for any necessary changes.”
For others, a possibly longer wait time has not been too stressful. Math major Adam Lam, who is also the managing web editor at The Strand, only received the grade for his History of Law course on the first day of the new semester, but said “for myself, since I enjoyed the course and I wasn’t too worried about the grade, it was alright. But I could see how it would be stressful for my classmates [in different circumstances].”
Most rules for faculty about course organization are listed in the over 23,000 word Academic Handbook for Instructors. It stipulates, among other policies, that all 100-level courses outside of First-Year Foundation seminars and College-sponsored Ones programs must have an exam with a weight of between ⅓ and ⅔ of a final grade.
It adds, “Best practice is to return all term work within at most two weeks of the submission date. […] The longer the time taken before the feedback is received, the less useful that feedback will be to the student.”
