Different approaches to getting marked
The ways different universities have of assessing your grades is more varied than a packet of schizoid Smarties.
Some place the emphasis on exams, while others spend more time on continual assessment or particular pieces of work like projects, work placements, essays (usually up to about 3,000 words), extended essays (3,000 to 8,000), dissertations (really just extended extended essays — anything from 5,000 words to 25,000) or a thesis (usually for postgrads only, and any length over about 15,000 words).
Performance in seminars, tutorials and the like is sometimes taken into account, but not always.
Whether you’re bad at exams, a shrinking violet in class or too much of a procrastinator ever to write decent essays, there’s a different assessment technique to suit you.
I reckon nearly a third of students could bump themselves up a grade just by choosing more carefully a university that’ll grade them by their strengths.
As for the grades themselves, there’s not quite so much variety. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s not confusing.
Most undergraduate courses lead to an ‘honours’ degree. (If you hear someone boasting that they have an honours degree, ignore the word ‘honours’ in the sentence and then decide whether they’ve got anything to boast about.)
The grades, in descending order, are:
- 1st (some universities give starred firsts for extra special swottiness);
- 2:1 (pronounced ‘two-one’ or ‘upper second’);
- 2:2 (pronounced ‘two-two’ or ‘lower second’; commonly known as a ‘Desmond’ after Bishop Tutu)
- 3rd
Below that, students might get a ‘recommended pass’ (aka ‘RP’) which means they don’t get an honours degree after all, but an ‘ordinary’ degree. And below that, there’s failure.There are weird grades like ‘aegrotat’, but they’re not worth worrying about.
Once you’ve got your degree, you get letters after your name. BSc (Bachelor of Science) and BA (Bachelor of Arts) are the most common, but there’s also BEd (not for oversleeping but for education), BEng (engineering) and so on. The range of postgrad letters is even more bewildering — MA, MSc, MBA, PhD, DLitt, LLB, PGCE and that’s just for starters.
These bachelors’ degrees are the standard scroll you get in England, Wales and Northern Ireland where most undergraduate courses only last three years. In Scotland, however, most courses are four years and students end up with an MA or MSc (Master of ).
Oxford and Cambridge, as usual, have their own way of doing things. You get your bachelor’s degree after three years but, after a set time in the real world — usually a year — if you’ve kept your nose clean, you can have a master’s degree (for a small fee, but no extra study).
Last updated on: 25 April 2008