Anxiously Awaiting Results

Hi everyone, sorry for my blogging absence recently, I have been on a long holiday with two of my closest friends from our geography course, so haven’t had computer access.  Last Thursday, whilst we were away, the third year Geographers received our final degree grades. As you can imagine, it was a pretty nerve-wracking experience, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about the processes which happen before results are available to us.

There are quite a few stages before our results can be decided and given out, but the department makes third year marks a priority over first and second year students as we are the ones graduating, and our final grade is obviously very important to us!

Firstly our exam papers must be marked, along with any remaining coursework, before they are moderated. When that has been completed, the examination board meets to consider the final grades of each student, and if they are on the borderline of a grade boundary, whether to bring them up into the next grade category.

For example, to gain a first class honours, you could either get an average grade of 70% or above, however if your average is 69% and you have 120 credits above 70% you can also be awarded a first (individual modules are usually 20 credits, but the dissertation is 40). I think the cut off is 67.5% for a first and 57.5% for a 2:1, but I’m not 100% sure so don’t quote me on that! All the information regarding grades is provided in the departmental handbook is online for students to view at any time.

So anyway, the board met on Tuesday 17^th June, and by that evening we knew that our grades had been decided, but we, of course, didn’t know what they were. Our results are provided to us online on a website called MyStudentRecords, but before we can access them we the department sends our results to the Registry, who have to process them and put them online for us to view. Of course, the Registry have thousands of students’ results to process, so it can take some time.

I was on holiday with two of my friends from my course, and we had mixed feelings about this. I was excited to hear my result, so was checking my emails at any opportunity when I was connected to the wifi – whilst one friend was actively trying to ignore it and not think about it as she was anxious about her result.

When they became available on Thursday it did make my heart pound, as this is the culmination of three years of hard work, but I was very pleased to gain a first class degree. Now I can write “BSc Hons” after my name! The majority of my friends gained the degree classification they were hoping and aiming for, although I do know a couple who are a little disappointed, which is a shame.

So now the only thing left is graduation, where we get to celebrate the last three years, before leaving Leicester University forever, which will be sad for many of us! It is amazing how fast the last three years have gone.