Student Help Required

davsidipp

My son messed up on his first year and did not get what was required to continue to the second year. He only missed out by a couple of marks and the uni has offered him the choice of resitting thw whole year or just the module he failed as a part-time student. He does not want to repeat whole course but he thinks he will not get a student loan if he is only a part-time student. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Kamran

Its better to repeat the year and give it a clean shot again, I'm sure he's learnt from his mistakes. A part time student seems awkward to me, but i wouldnt know the logistics..

Blacksheep1979

If he resits it all he stand a better chance at getting a better mark on the whole year, however if the first year doesn't count for anything he could do it part time and get a job which will look good on his CV when he applies to the real world after uni.

Snow_Angel

Blacksheep1979 wrote:

If he resits it all he stand a better chance at getting a better mark on the whole year, however if the first year doesn't count for anything he could do it part time and get a job which will look good on his CV when he applies to the real world after uni.

I fully agree with this suggestion. I don't know any uni that counts the 1st year grade towards the final degree mark. And failing once may provide the motivation to never let it happen again. I'm sure he'll do really well in his 2nd and 3rd year now

DrFluffy

A lot of universities now count as much as 15% of the first year towards your degree classification - my friend is at Imperial, and her 1st year counts 11%.

As pointed out what he wants to do may well depend on his other module grades, if they are not great, then he might want to think about resitting, if they are fine, and this is a 'bum module' then doing one module part time might allow him to work full time and save some money/get some relevant work experience.etc...

rhig

The other grades he got are an important factor, if his other grades were mainly 2:2s or there were any thirds then it would be worth a full resit. This will allow him to improve in everything and make friends in his new year, he will need them if there is a lot of coursework. If he does resit the one module and doesn't get a job it will not look good in the future, especially if he has other problems later in the course.

I'm not sure about the student loan, if he is part time and with a job it isnt really an issue as he can pay his costs with that. If his grades were mediocre in more modules and he went to lectures it may mean he should reconsider his current course this may sound harsh but its much better to change course after one year than two.

I was in the same position after year 1, I had one fail in calculus by less than one percent because I didn't attend the weekly tests (9am after a local pubs £1/drink night). All my other grades were 1sts or 2:1s, I changed course from computing to economics.

The computing was easy, I only attended a dozen lectures all year but I didn't find it as interesting as I thought I would have and I know my grades would have fallen in further years due to my lack of interest in the subject. Changing course now with reasonable grades doesn't look too bad, of course lack of interest in the subject may not be the problem.

lau_dicker

Why would he have to be a part time student? Could he not have do the resit over the summer? If we fail a module we get another chance to do it in August, but if we only fail one, we dont have to retake it at all. If we fail between 2 and 5 we get a chance to resit them all and have to pass them all in August, if we fail more than 5 we have to do the whole year again (we take 10 modules a year, 5 each semester although some run for the whole year). Sometimes, if we fail just one we can do it with the rest of our modules the next year too. I dont understand why he would have to take just one module for the whole year?

davsidipp

hi lau dicker.what uni do you go to.

lau_dicker

At the mo, I'm finishing my BSc at Teesside, and then on to Leeds Met to do a MSc

Kamran

Lucky me, my first 2 years dont count towards my degree!

Savvy_Sue

Kamran wrote:

Lucky me, my first 2 years dont count towards my degree!

It's a bit scary if your entire degree relies on your performance in exams at the end of year 3, and even more scary if you get quite severely depressed in year 3! :rotfl: