Appealing university grades

and so they should elst what's the point?

It was a response to those questioning why he wanted his grade upgraded from a 2nd to a 2nd. I'm leaving the rest of the topic alone as I haven't decided what my stance on it is.
 
I was 0.56% away from a 2:1, went and did a masters on the back of a great set of tutor references who understood why I failed miserably in 2nd year (lost my dad and was sorting that out).

Man up and take it, you can go anywhere regardless of your uni grade provided you are a real enough person, if you think you need the 2:1 to actually achieve in life then you wont get what you desire anyway.
 
Universities are not very lenient on giving extra marks out like that. In fact they wont just give you % to bump you up. What they might offer to do is to if you really press them is remark some exams and you are forced to take the new grades which may be lower than the first grades you were given.
They don't like to do that for people at just below the pass grade, they have a pass mark for a reason and will keep to that strictly.


Also be aware that when assigning the final graduation grade the rules are usually more complex than simply a straight arithmetic mean. Normally you must not hvae more than a certain number of modules graded at 1 grade below you final grade, and there must be no modules with a grade 2 below.

So even if you get your exams remarked and by some miracle you end up at >= 60%, if you have too many modules that scored a 2.2 grade or anything that scored a 3 grade then you will still gt a 2.2 final grade.

Thereby it is very unlikely that you will ever change your grade the university has prescribed, at least at a reputable establishment. Furthermore, graduation time is not the time to complain about grading or other personal issues - that should have been taken care of much earlier back. Also, don't expect the university to magic up more marks just because you were sick or some personal circumstances were involved. that is not how it works, they are just more likely to bend some rules around retting failed exams or resitting your final year (normally if you fail your last year you cannot resit the year and must start form the bottom again...). This is because it is impossible to give fair adjustments to exams based on such events,
 
anything under a 2:1 is a fail in my book so get appealing.

a scraped 2:1 is hardly good tho, mine was the same :P

he is saying there might be a way to blag another % to >60%

People tend to not feel the same when people get a 2:2 when doing something like OU at the same time as full-time work - the fact they can study to pass and work always looks good to a potential employer.
But I guess if you're doing nothing in life but studying a 2:1 should be achievable by most.
 
As others have said, if you are serious about wanting to appeal this grade, then read your university regulations carefully and consider exactly the grounds on which you wish to make the appeal.

However, you should be aware that:

(i) for most universities that I know of, you cannot appeal on the grounds of academic judgement; so you can't argue that a piece of work was worth more than it received.

(ii) The scripts of candidates whose scores end up near to grade boundaries are likely to have been very carefully scrutinized by the exam board.

Therefore the grounds for an appeal lie usually lie with either (a) something having gone wrong in the processes surrouning the examination and its marking or (b) mitigating circumstances. If the latter exist, they should have been brought to the attention of the university authorities as soon as they occured.
 
I was 3% off a first. Damn i should have appealed, its only a few percent....

I was 2% and actually got a higher mark than 2 friends who were awarded firsts. If youre on the borderline I'm sure they apply some crazy shenanigans to determine whether or not they'll bump you up.

With me I don't think they did because I completely fluffed one exam scraping through with 42% on it where the pass rate was 40. They didn't take into account medical issues because I didn't report them at the time...I reported them a week later when I was finally able to get an appointment with the dr. Gah.
 
You cannot work at my firm with less than a 2:1, and we are far from the only place with such requirements.

It's pretty important.

How sad, some of the best engineers i have come across are those who did a apprenticeship, did a HNC part time and are now running budgets that would make your eyes bleed.

All a 2:1 does it open up a couple of extra doors and a excuse for HR to justify themselves in the modern world :p
 
At King's if you were a certain percentage below a grade they would still award you the higher grade. Some person I know got around 68% but was awarded a first.

Maybe there's something similar for your uni ?
 
I love people like this.

You got what you deserved from the work you either did or didn't put in. That's the reality that I and all other students have to face, unless you have concessions that say otherwise.

Here is your answer. Don't hassle the Uni with this and next time work harder.
 
At King's if you were a certain percentage below a grade they would still award you the higher grade. Some person I know got around 68% but was awarded a first.

Was this consistently applied? The usual sort of process is that scripts falling around grade boundaries are inspected and elements of performance that indicate the higher grade may be taken into account in the final decision. A straightforward upgrading of all within a certain percentage of the nominal boundary seems unlikely (unless a "natural" boundary had occured in the exam).
 
At my university people that close to the boundary would be asked to a viva oral exam with an external examiner. In addition a selection of students who were deemed to be typical of their awarded grade boundary were also invited to a viva to give the external examiners a benchmark.

Gives a chance for the student to showcase what they really know in a scenario more typical of the real world.

I know a few people who got them although only maybe 1 or two were awarded an increased grade.

Sounds to me like the OP just didn't work hard enough and, as is becoming more and more typical these days in this "entitlement" culture, thinks he deserves to be cut some slack.

/Salsa
 
I got my grades today, and I was 2.something percent away from a 2:1.

However they had calculated it wrong, and I am 1.1% away from a 2:1

Anyway to appeal this?

There were a lot of circumstances which went against me, and the university messed me around a fair bit on a number of things.

Are you sure you have worked it out correctly? University scoring systems can be somewhat arcane at the best of times, I needed a spreadsheet to work out what my expected grade is.
 
I got a 2.2, also quite close to the 2.1 boundary.

I thought '****, should have put a bit more effort in' and then went and got on with my life quite successfully despite not having 'easy access' to grad schemes that all limited themselves to 2.1 or upwards.

I've actually ended up working with many such companies since and all I can say is... those policies don't necessarily seem to be working out all that well for them, they perhaps need to start finding better ways of selecting graduates :p
 
Was this consistently applied? The usual sort of process is that scripts falling around grade boundaries are inspected and elements of performance that indicate the higher grade may be taken into account in the final decision. A straightforward upgrading of all within a certain percentage of the nominal boundary seems unlikely (unless a "natural" boundary had occured in the exam).

Hmm not sure now. I just assumed it was a straightforward process if the conditions below were met. The person I know didn't have any mitigating circumstances etc.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/study/handbook/programmes/ug/DiscretionFramework.pdf
 
Hmm not sure now. I just assumed it was a straightforward process if the conditions below were met. The person I know didn't have any mitigating circumstances etc.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/study/handbook/programmes/ug/DiscretionFramework.pdf

Looks like there's a lot of "will exercise their discretion" and "will be considered" in there :)

I think they've just codified the practice that already exists for sanity checking the grade boundaries, specifying exactly when they can start doing that checking.
 
It's astonishing the number of people who were within a whisker of a better grade. I assume scoring follows the standard bell curve so perhaps they're just more bitter vocal.
 
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