Do universities know if you have taken a resit?

Sorry if this has already been asked :redface:

Basically I'm on my first year at college and I've just finished all four of my january exams. I want to get all A's [preferably high A's] on all four of the modules as I want to study medicine, so there's more chance of me getting an A overall for my A levels.

However, I don't think I've done too well and think the maximum I've gotten for biology and chemistry is a B, whereas I found maths and psychology slightly easyish. I don't want a B though, so I'm sort of preparing myself to resit them in the summer in order to get a higher grade [but obviously I wont know what I got until March]. If I do end up resitting, will the universities be able to find out, or will I have to mention it and if so, then will I be at a disadvantage?

Sorry if this was a bit long lol.

Reply 1

Darkhadou

No, as far as I know, if you're doing the resits in the first year- they don't need to know.
The person that writes your reference to the Unis MIGHT mention it but there really is no point in telling them as you're taking the exams at the general normal time as everyone else and your Jan exams can be considered an "early entry".
Also, by the time you start writing your personal statement in your second year, you'll already have your results for the "resits". So yeah, they don't need to know and they shouldn't know either.

Reply 2

Faiza.

Darkhadou

Oh okay. Thanks alot. It's really been bugging me all day, because a few mates said that universities do get to know, and I asked one of the teachers and she said that we had to write down our resit results as well as our results we got first time :s-smilie:

Ahh well.

Reply 3

Darkhadou

Pfft, harsh if you ask me.
They should only be mentioning it to the Uni's if you're retaking your AS exams during your second year. You should talk it over with the teachers/ referees later on, when the time to write your personal statement comes around.
Good luck.

Reply 4

Faiza.

Darkhadou

Thanks for all the help :yy:

Reply 5

Good bloke

Hold on a minute. That is not the whole story. Cambridge already ask you to declare all UMS scores, at the modular level, whether passed or failed, re-sit or not. It is rumoured that Oxford is moving to a similar system, and who knows what the UCAS system will be for next year? Perhaps the declaration of module results will become compulsory rather than optional. Other top universities, faced with a glut of AAA+ applicants are quite likely to do something similar, if UCAS does not make changes.

In addition, universities can tell from your exam dates whether a later re-sit has been taken, if they care to look.

And, of course, poor results followed by re-sits will not look as good as getting it right first time.

Reply 6

Faiza.

Good bloke

Thats exactly what I was waiting to hear lol.
I thought only Cambridge would know if you resat any exams, but apparantly all universities can know (or so I'm told)

So atm it's optional to state your module results?

Yeah the bold bit was the part that I was most interested in. I would be at a disadvantage then.

Thanks for your help. :smile: