Calculus Removal Exam Unfairly Graded
I’m currently dealing with a situation in my Calculus removal exam where I feel my grade may not have been evaluated fairly. My answers were mathematically correct, but I lost all points because I did not use prime notation in my final answer. The issue is that this requirement was never clearly stated in the exam or class instructions, syllabus, or discussed as a strict grading rule in class. I followed the format used in a previous test paper itself, which did not emphasize notation like that yet my instructor still checked it without the prime notation, and even in the examples on the board did not have it either. She rarely has classes too so we had learn most of it from a book and on the internet. What makes it more serious is that this removal exam determines whether I pass the subject, and failing it has made me an irregular student since it is a prerequisite for my other subjects adding 1 year to my 4 years in college— I already raised my concern to the instructor, but the decision was not changed, so I’m unsure if I have grounds to escalate it further or if this is considered normal in university grading policies where they can just change their minds whenever they want and grade however they want. If one more year is added I'll have to start paying tuition by the 6th year.
The most irritating part is that I got 6 answers correct which was more than I needed to pass, yet she scored me a zero because of the missing prime notation. My other classmates who also took the removal exam also had the same problem, they were missing a prime notation. I honestly don't know what to do, I already tried talking to her before but she didn't even seem that concerned at all, I would feel bad if I reported her since she already gave us three removal exams, the first one was hell— all the difficult equations were all there, didn't pass that one, the second one was well, I already mentioned it, but it was really easy, like REALLY easy but the missing prime notation was the problem lol, and the third one was just recently but it was very difficult like the first one. I'm losing sleep from just thinking about the results but the 2nd Removal Exam was really unfair.