What to Do If You’re Failing a Class: 7 Tips for Students

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

Most students will fail a test or an assignment at some point in their school lives. While this isn’t ideal, it’s normal and won’t likely jeopardize your overall class grade too much. If you fail a test, follow these strategies here.

However, failing a class is a totally different situation.  

Failing a class requires an intentional strategy. (Nope, you cannot rely on hope in this situation.) In this blog post, I’m laying out the roadmap to follow that shows you exactly what to do if you’re failing a class. 

What to Do If You’re Failing a Class

Below, you’ll find seven strategies for navigating a class you’re failing. For the most part, I’ve laid them out in the order it makes sense to follow them. However, failing a class is an urgent situation, which means you should attempt to make your way through the strategies as quickly as you can.

Something to keep in mind as you read this blog post and as you begin to implement the strategies: To change your grade, you must change your approach. You absolutely cannot continue to do what you’ve been doing and expect your grade to go up. In most cases, a radical grade change requires radical behavior change.

1. Talk to Your Teacher

If you’re failing a class, talking to your teacher or professor is an obvious first step. Oddly enough, it’s the step that most students skip.

There are multiple compelling reasons why you should connect with your teacher at the first signs of failing a class. Let’s look at two of them below:

a. Talking to your teacher lets them know you care about your learning. This may sound trivial, but it has more impact than you might think. If you don’t connect at all with your teacher about your grade, it gives the opposite message: that you don’t care about your performance in the class. And if you don’t care about your learning, your teacher will be less inclined to help you.

b. Your teacher can help you come up with a plan. As you’ll see in the next few tips, you need a legitimate plan to turn around a failing class grade. While you need to do the work, your teacher can help you prioritize assignments and map out your trajectory.

2. Complete All Missing Assignments

It’s possible to complete all your assignments and still fail a class. This scenario requires a different approach (including many of the tips in this post.) But if you’re failing a class and you have missing assignments, you have to turn those in.

Homework and classwork assignments are the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, You have total control over whether or not you complete this type of work on time. Even if you do poorly on tests and quizzes, you can give your grade a solid baseline just by turning in your work when it’s due.

If you’re overwhelmed with a large quantity of late assignments, it can be helpful to connect with your teacher to prioritize the ones that will give you the biggest grade boost. You also most definitely want to use these tips for completing late assignments in a reasonable, sanity-saving way.

Sometimes a teacher won’t allow you to submit late assignments. If this is your teacher‘s policy, then that’s kind of what it is. However, I always advise students to meet with teachers and ask for exceptions or partial credit. If they still say no, then you know at least you tried.

I once had a student who was initially told he would get no credit for late assignments. (He had 10 missing assignments.) He did every single one of them anyway, even after being told he wouldn’t get any credit. The teacher was so impressed at that effort that he gave my student half credit on all 10 assignments, raising his class grade by nine points. This saved him from failure. 

It’s always worth asking and doing the work anyway.

3. Go to Class

Another low-hanging-fruit strategy to use if you’re failing a class is to go to class. I know, a groundbreaking idea.

Here’s the thing though: Most students who are failing a class are so overwhelmed, confused and even ashamed, that they avoid class in order to avoid their negative feelings.

This is a bad approach.

Not attending a class you’re failing will only guarantee that you fail it.

Instead, attend every class with one goal: to not fall further behind. This means taking notes, asking questions, staying after when needed, and doing all assignments. (Yes, completing current assignments in addition to tackling your backlog of assignments is challenging. You can try the 2:1 ratio in this scenario. Complete 2 current assignments for every 1 late assignment.)

If you’re already attending all of your classes, that’s amazing. Then my suggestion would be to change your seat, perhaps a little closer to the teacher. Check in with your note-taking system and confirm it’s working for you. Maybe ask a peer to share their notes at the end of class. Participate as much as possible during class, knowing that it’s perfectly acceptable to raise your hand and ask for clarification.

Again, if we want to change our grade, we have to change our behavior.

4. Assess What’s Going On

There’s a reason you’re failing a class. You need to figure out what this reason is. 

Your first thought might be to blame the teacher or the class, and that’s understandable. It certainly feels less painful to point a finger at someone else than it does to point a finger at ourselves. 

But the reality is that most students fail classes because of their own actions. 

Maybe you’re failing because you didn’t complete your assignments. And maybe you didn’t complete your assignments because the material was genuinely super difficult. In that case, you’re failing because you didn’t seek help when you needed help understanding the material.

Maybe you’re failing because you completed your homework assignments but didn’t score well on them. And maybe you didn’t score well on them because you didn’t really understand the content.  In that case, you’re failing because you didn’t face the reality that you were confused — before it was too late.

Maybe you’re failing because you didn’t do well on tests. You studied and felt okay during your study sessions, but your test grades are still Fs. In that case, you’re failing because you didn’t TEST yourself using ACTIVE RECALL study methods to reveal that you didn’t know the material as well as you thought you did. 

In this video here, I explain exactly what’s really going on when you think you’re bad at tests. Hint: You’re not bad at taking tests.

I cannot overestimate the importance of doing a self-assessment. In fact, I have a free self-assessment designed specifically for students. You can access and download that free PDF here.

But in the meantime, the following questions can get you started:

• Do I understand the material or do I need a tutor?
• Is something outside of school affecting my energy and concentration?
• Am I truly testing myself on the material during my study sessions or am I using passive recall methods like flipping through my notes?
• Am I starting my study sessions early enough and using spaced repetition? Or am I falling for the myth that night-before study sessions work?

5. Do the Math

If you’re failing a class early on, there are usually plenty of steps you can take to save your grade. Obviously, use the tips in this blog post. 

But there will come a point when it is mathematically too late for you to save your grade. If you’re failing a class that is more than halfway over, you may not have enough remaining assignments to pass the class. Even if you score an A on all remaining assignments and tests, you may not be able to earn enough points to clear the F zone.

This is where talking to your teacher (Tip 1) is critical, as they may be able to give extra credit work (Tip 6) or create additional opportunities for you to earn points. 

Every teacher weights tests and assignments differently, but the following example can give you a general idea of how to ”do the math” as I’m advising:

If your current grade is 55%, and you have three more tests worth 100 points each, you need to average 80% on the remaining tests to pass with a 65%.”

6. Do Extra Credit

Not all teachers offer extra credit, but if yours does, do it. Do all of it. And do it well.

Here’s the catch: Many professors only offer extra credit to students who have a history of putting in the work. In other words, if you haven’t been attending class, submitting your assignments, or staying after, you may not be given the chance to do extra credit.

So what’s the lesson here? Attending class and submitting your assignments on time is kind of like an extra-credit insurance policy. 

7. Meet with Your Advisor

If you’re failing a college course and there’s no mathematical chance to save your grade, it’s time to meet with your advisor. 

Every college and university has its own policies for handling failed classes, so you need to make sure you understand your school’s policy. That’s where your advisor comes in.

In some cases, your advisor may suggest dropping the failed class and retaking it later. For many schools, a dropped class does not show up on the transcript. Again, this is something you will need to clarify and work through with your advisor.

I’m not suggesting you drop every class you’re at a risk of failing. That approach doesn’t work for 1000 different reasons, including the reality that continuously dropping courses will push back your graduation date and increase how much you pay in college tuition.

What to Do If You’re Failing a Class and Have No Motivation to Fix It

The seven strategies above are for students determined to fix their failing grades. The strategies above take time and effort, and that’s something that nobody can provide for you.

A failing grade doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s usually a slow slide from an A to an F over time.  Bringing an F back up to an A takes an equal amount of time, if not more.

But if you are failing a class and rolling your eyes at these tips, then perhaps the strategies are not for you. If you genuinely do not have the motivation to dig yourself out of a hole, it’s probably best to cut bait.

Again, talk to your advisor so you understand your school’s policy about failed courses. But if simply reading about strategies to fix an F is putting you off, then it’s safe to assume you won’t commit to using these strategies.

I’m making no judgment about whether that’s good or bad. I’m simply stating that it’s on you to face the music. It’s far better to say ”I am failing this class and I’m not going to do anything about it” than to continue to fail a class and blame everyone else.

It’s also important to consider why you’re not motivated to improve your grade. Are you feeling burned out? Is the course not related to your future goals, which makes it hard to see the relevance? Are you struggling with your mental health or something beyond the course? These are all very important questions to ask yourself. Your mental health is always more important than your grades.

We all fail. Failure itself is not the problem. The real failure is the inability to look in the mirror and get back up. Failing a class doesn’t define you or make you a bad person. What matters is how you respond to the situation. With these strategies, you have a clear path forward.