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I don't understand "compensation"

Uni of Brighton. Can someone help? I am taking 2 resits in the summer which I'm mostly confident in but I can't stop picturing the worst case scenario if I fail one of the resits. I'm wondering what would happen, and even though the university explained it, I still can't grasp what they mean by "compensation". Plus English isn't my first language. If someone could dumb this down for me please?

"If you do not pass in the summer, then it will likely be compensated in the September exam boards so that you can progress to the next year. However you cannot be compensated in the same topic area twice, so say you were previously compensated in BY150, you must pass BY263 otherwise you will have to retake it or be withdrawn from the course."

Reply 1

gjd800

'Compensation' is when they allow you to gain the credits for a failed unit by virtue of your passing x amount of credits first time. It's them saying 'well because you passed this other stuff, we will let you get away with failing that one'.

Each university has a slightly different take on it (sometimes it differs by department). From what they are saying, BY150 sounds like a prerequisite to BY263, which means that in order to study BY263, you must have taken and passed 150 in the prior year.

What this further means is that if you pass by compensation BY150, you have not technically passed it - it has been awarded to you despite a fail. In turn, they will not then allow you to fail BY263, as your compensated pass for this topic has been used already.

It's to make sure you have the necessary skill and knowledge in a topic area and don't used skip through 3 years fo a topic area having failed all of the examinations in that topic area (in this case, Genetics and Molecular Biology).