What should I do??

Basil_Fawlty

OK here's the situation. This time last week an envelope pops through my letterbox saying I've not passed 6 out of the 12 modules from my university course.

The marks were in the region of 30-38 in the failed modules and from a breakdown of the results I can see that my average mark for the practical side is 73% but the exam theory marks are fails. I did loads of revision and my friends on the course were testing each other over messenger making sure we knew the stuff properly. It turns out that out of the 13 students on my course, 9 have made it through to the final year.

However the uni is saying I've got to do the 6 exams again in august which seems overly harsh to me considering I'd have got the same treatment had I not turned up to the exams at all and got 0 for each. I've had no benefit of revising hard over the revision period and attending the exams. I got an average of 65% in my first year (a 2:1 standard) and that almost continued with a 61% average for the Christmas exams in this my second year. But the summer exams have been a huge flop and nobody seems to care why it's happened.

I feel depressed just thinking about the fact I'll need to spend the remaining holiday revising for exams and to be honest I don't even know where I flipped out. They don't release the exam papers (which is odd considering I'm the one who wrote the answer!) so I'm not sure what went so horribly wrong. Also with the August exams the mark is capped at 40% no matter how much better I may do and I've been calculating, and found that if I do the 6 resits and get a capped mark of 40 then my year 2 average only rises by 6% :eek: so what's the point of doing them? It's the university registry that insists that I have to do these but I can't think what's going to come of it apart from increased stress and anxiety.

I was supposed to be doing my third year research project but that all seems unlikely as I've got to retake these 6 exams and one of them is so tricky that only 6 people out of the 21 who took it actually passsed. How I'm going to get 40% in that I don't know.

Please be reassuring

nearlyrich

Sorry to hear you haven't done too well in your exams, is your tutor available for a chat? It would be good to know before resitting the exams where you went wrong last time wouldn't it?

Hope you can get it sorted out.

skintchick

Oh, sorry to hear you failed

I remember failing some of my exams and being utterly gutted. Took me another two goes to pass them all too!

You need to speak to your tutor, and get them to find out why you failed, where you went wrong.

Do they do negative marking (Where they take off marks if you say somethign stupid even if the rest of your answer is right)? If so then that might be it. My law exams were like that so it was best not to try and blag an answer!!

Once you've found out what went wrong, take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and revise.

You might want to discuss with your tutor whether you can resit the whole year so you're not capped on the marks.

Have a rant and scream about it, then get on with sorting it out.

And remember - you don;t have to have a degree to do well in life and your career. I don;t have a degree, just a vocational qualification, and I am high up in my field now and have a good reputation, so it really isn;t the be all and end all.

nelly_2

Let me guess...... you spent all year getting !!!!!! partying then crammed like mad in the last week till 5 in the morning every night.

All students do that for some reason.

Basil_Fawlty

nelly wrote:

Let me guess...... you spent all year getting !!!!ed partying then crammed like mad in the last week till 5 in the morning every night.

All students do that for some reason.

Does someone have a grudge against all students or is that a joke missing the smileys? :rolleyes: Firstly, I don't drink, secondly I suffer from asthma which means pubs/clubs are out of bounds. Thirdly none of my housemates are like that so neither am I. How about concentrating your disgust on those who spend your tax-bucks doing "Gambling Studies" there are plenty of them about. :rolleyes: Someone with an education wouldn't generalise like you did there but maybe that says something about you... :rotfl:

Strangely enough the people on my course who did spend seemingly all their night-time partying their student loans away have passed through to the final year I don't know what I'm doing wrong because I did allot a lot of time for revision well in advance. I got steady 60-80's last year with an average of 69 this year it's not close. Neither can my tutor think why. He's going to try and look at some of the exam scripts to see what's going on but there's a multiple choice component too which on one I've got 0 in :rotfl: It takes some doing I've got to see the funny side It's a computer thing like filling in the national lottery with pencil lines in the correct boxes. I don't like trusting my degree to an optical reader but maybe that's just me

I'd thought about not doing a degree in the first place but after doing A-Levels then there was little point in leaving it there and besides I like (and still do) . I'm just feeling burnt out from revising.

Lady_E

Forgive my ignorance about the system , but do they allow your papers to be remarked ? I cant understand it , if you have put all the work in and do well in the practicals and it comes to this . Could it be a marking c*ck up ?

Basil_Fawlty

Lady_E wrote:

Forgive my ignorance about the system , but do they allow your papers to be remarked ? I cant understand it , if you have put all the work in and do well in the practicals and it comes to this . Could it be a marking c*ck up ?

They say that each exam paper is marked by the module coordinator then checked by another lecturer and I'm not in a position to challenge it at the moment!

It's annoying because if I'd scored 6% more then I'd be through to the third year now with no resits at all :rolleyes:

mrcow

spaceage wrote:

there's a multiple choice component too which on one I've got 0 in :rotfl:

If you'd used a pin, you would have got 20%

I'm glad your tutor is looking into this for you. August seems so soon for retakes and I'm really feeling for you.

I never failed any years at uni (although my brother did) but my marks did drop considerably. It's a stressful time for many, especially if you're living away from home (and the summer holidays are when you're trying to build some money up!).

If you only failed by 6% then I'd definitely be asking for a remark on those particualr papers (what's to lose?).

My tip: Keep your tutor on side. The university don't want to lose you, as they'll lose your funding. They have a lot of discretion and will use it if they feel it's the right thing to do. Concentrate on what your didn't perform so well on, and take it easy.

I can't think of anything more stressful for a student than not knowing if you're even going to be able to rejoin your year next term.

One other thing, if you are at all feeling under the weather at the time of your resits (though stress/illness/anything), MAKE SURE that you get yourself to the doctors and get them to document it. It will add weight to an appeal if things do get that far...........

DrFluffy

nelly wrote:

Let me guess...... you spent all year getting !!!!!! partying then crammed like mad in the last week till 5 in the morning every night.

All students do that for some reason.

Do they? .

ffeindadifyr

Usually one examiner will mark that paper... then another will check all the answers. Then there is a meeting where any unusual marks are discussed, and if needed the papers are brought in to be looked at.

What I have seen in my short time doing this lecturing malarky is that some students tend to self-destruct after one bad exam - is this what happened?

Summer exams are only set to 40% max as the exams are usually slightly easier, and just ask a lot more general questions to see if you undestood the basics of the course.

Basil_Fawlty

mrcow wrote:

If you'd used a pin, you would have got 20%

I'm glad your tutor is looking into this for you. August seems so soon for retakes and I'm really feeling for you.

I never failed any years at uni (although my brother did) but my marks did drop considerably. It's a stressful time for many, especially if you're living away from home (and the summer holidays are when you're trying to build some money up!).

If you only failed by 6% then I'd definitely be asking for a remark on those particualr papers (what's to lose?).

My tip: Keep your tutor on side. The university don't want to lose you, as they'll lose your funding. They have a lot of discretion and will use it if they feel it's the right thing to do. Concentrate on what your didn't perform so well on, and take it easy.

I can't think of anything more stressful for a student than not knowing if you're even going to be able to rejoin your year next term.

One other thing, if you are at all feeling under the weather at the time of your resits (though stress/illness/anything), MAKE SURE that you get yourself to the doctors and get them to document it. It will add weight to an appeal if things do get that far...........

I was feeling pretty bad as we've had a rough family time and still are, I went to see the GP but am concerned they will at this stage say that I'm making excuses

I'm about to email the lecturer to say that resitting the second year is not something I'm prepared to do. I had told my tutor (he's a different older and more lethargic guy) about the problems we'd been going through as a family and he was sympathetic but as head he hasn't really done anything to help, well nothing that's obvious That's why I've contacted the genetics guy from the medical school who's much much nicer to me anyway. He said that extenuating circumstances can be used to allow me to resit the year but he didn't say anything about doing something about resits and marks