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Classification of your degree

Hi guys,

I have some friends at uni which believe that your overall degree classification is going to be the same as your second year but 3 marks up 3 marks down.

For example you had 70 on your second year then your overall grade is going to be 67-73. is that true?

Another guy told us that his lecturer stated that he 'fits on the statistics' to obtain a 2.1 degree as he got in his second year an overall 65% so it is obvious to graduate with 2.1 degree.

What do you think about that?

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1

devils_nose

Obviously this is nonsense. My third year counted for 66% of my grade so if I screwed it up my average could have dropped by a lot more than 3 marks!

(as it happened I was within 3 marks of my 2nd year average but I had to work really hard to stay there)

Reply 2

zziippoo

yeah i know that. but the strange thing is that I asked some friends form different universities (manchester, reading, sussex) about their classification and this works.

for example in my university goes like that: year 1 - 10%, year 2 - 30% and year 3 - 60%.

Reply 3

Kim-x

It might be that the majority of students will be +/-3% from their second year to their final degree, but obviously if you mess up in final year things will be drastically different, as it might be if someone with a second year that doesn't count for a large proportion of their degree doesn't try in second year but then works really hard in third year. This is kind of like predicted grades in a way; it works for some people.

Reply 4

Dan1909

I'd be quite happy if that was true, as I'd be guaranteed a first!

But no, that's not how it is. It's just the weighted average of all your modules from the years that actually count (as first year very rarely counts towards degree marks).

Reply 5

.ACS.

Every university is different and every faculty within every university is different.

On my programme, first year counts toward nothing, second year counts for 1/5, third year counts 2/5 and fourth year counts 2/5. However, if the overall classification was a 2.1, or 68% specifically, it would go up to a 1st if a certain number of modules were 70% or above.

Reply 6

dreadnaut

I think he might be talking about trends rather than how degrees actually get classed.

Within the classification rules, in general, maybe people who get a 2:1 in 2nd year go on to also get a 2:1 as their overall degree class.

That's how I would interpret "fits the statistics". Most unis have guidelines on how degrees are classified, but over so many people trends are bound to emerge.