How is the exam system at Oxford?

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Hi, I'm starting at Oxford this October (Physics) and I have a few questions on how the exam system works.

First of all, I'm not from the UK, so I'm not too familiar with the UK degree system. Correct me if I'm saying anything wrong. However, from what I've read, it's the average percentage of the finals which determines if you get a first, second etc.

My main question is then: Can you expect the marks that you get on your finals to be correct and trustworthy?

I ask because where I come from the universities have a bad reputation of giving out the wrong grades, even in subjects like maths and physics. I experienced this myself (I currently attend a university here) in a calculus course where I recieved a grade I knew wasn't correct. I asked for a remark and then I got the correct grade because it turned out the examiner didn't bother reading the last page of my answer. And I know that many people ask for a remark and get a completely different grade back, both better and worse.

I suspect that the problem is that where I'm from there's usually only one examiner who correct each student's answer. Most of the examiners are highly unmotivated and obviously an unmotivated examiner who has to correct 200 exam papers alone will do mistakes sometimes.

This leads to my second question: How many examiners correct each student's answer at Oxford? I my opinion, each paper must be corrected by at least two examiners to ensure that careless mistakes are spotted. This also has to do with the reputation and trustworthyness of the university. However, I see that universities don't like spending money on this, obviously.

From what I've read, Oxford does not allow you to ask for a remark of your exam paper. In general, I wonder if Oxford has some regulations that ensure the quality and trustworthyness of the exam results then? How can one be sure that a person getting 69% did worse on his/her finals than a person getting 71%? I think the borderline between a second and a first is about 70%. Is the system really trustworthy enough to give one person a second and another a first, even though their results differ by only 1-2%?

I hope I don't sound too sceptic about going to Oxford. The exam system in my country is not the reason why I applied to Oxford. (It's the tutorial system!)

Thanks!

I'll add to the person above - biochemistry follows a very similar format, other than there being no exams in second year. For us, your final degree classifcations was a weighted average of years 3 and 4 which included exams, coursework, and your 4th year research project and dissertation. Also, the biochemistry faculty have in place a system where candidates who sit near grade boundaries have their marks checked a third time, and if the examiners are unsure which class to put them in (say they scored less well in one or two exams compared to the others), they would invite them back for a 'viva voce' examination wherein they would ask them some further questions. In the latter case you can only be advanced to a higher degree class, and indeed you don't need to attend, but if you don't you lose out on the opportunity to potentially move to a higher grade.

Also, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it might be possible to get remarks. I know one of my close friends was planning to request this for one paper, but had ultimately left it too late to object to her grade.

In our experience, the marking is accurate and stringent. On occasion students do request individual mark checks but we've never known a case where a signficant change has been made. Very occasionally a cluster of marks are issued and then corrected - this happened a few years ago for Physics when an incorrect spreadsheet was uploaded.