Informatics Fourth Year Honours Course Guide
Assessment of work

For our 4-year single and combined Honours degrees(BSc and BEng), Degrees are awarded on the basis of performance in 3rd and 4th year equally weighted (each year is worth 50%).

For MInf students, the overall mark is computed by weighting the 3rd year as 20%, and the 4th and 5th years as 40% each.

This page is to give advice/information about our assessment procedures. The first recommendation is that at the outset of 4th year, students should discuss their 3rd year performance with their Personal Tutor, in order to see how they should best plan their 4th year studies for best results.

Assessment rules

Successful completion of 3rd year within the University of Edinburgh guarantees an Ordinary degree. Any student entering 4th year who has completed 3th year at Edinburgh University, and has attained an average grade of at least 40% in year 3, with at least 80 points of the 120 points individually over 40% (and who has 240 points already from years 1 and 2, see Assessment Regulations) is entitled to an Ordinary degree.

Clearly, all students entering 4th year of one of our programmes, are planning for an Honours degree. As mentioned before, the degrees are awarded as a combination of the 3rd and 4th year marks (and also 5th year, in the case of the MInf). For any student registered on a 4th-year degree programme, successful completion of 4th year leads to the award of Honours degree with classification First, Upper Second, Lower Second or Third Class Honours may be granted. Recommendations are made by the Board of Examiners, which includes an External Examiner from another university; it considers all of the available evidence on the academic performance and special circumstances of each student.

For 4 year degrees, once the weighted combination of year 3 and year 4 has been computed, the overall degree classification is determined according to the table below (note that an extra criterion is that 80 points of the 120 4th year points must be individually over the 40% boundary, again this is part of the Assessment Regulations).

GradeMark RangeHonours ClassDescription
A1 90--100FirstExcellent
A2 80--89FirstExcellent
A3 70--79FirstExcellent
B60--69Upper SecondVery Good
C50--59Lower SecondGood
D40--49ThirdSatisfactory
E30--39FailMarginal Fail
F20--29FailClear Fail
G 10--19FailBad Fail
H 0--9Fail

Note that although your grades for individual courses appear on MyEd according to the first column (A1, etc), the classification of your degree will be determined according to the third column (no sub-classes exist for a First). A student who fails 4th year will usually be awarded an Ordinary degree, assuming that they already passed our 3rd year programme during the previous year.

The Board of Examiners for single honours degrees is responsible for approving all course marks (except for outside courses that fall under the remit of another Board) as well as the classification of degrees, First Class etc. For combined Honours degrees the individual course marks are approved as part of the relevant single Honours Boards. However, the degree classification for the combined honours students is carried out by a dedicated Board for that degree (with members of the Exam Board for each School). The main assessment is average mark (according to the weighting of various years), but some extra considerations may be taken into account if a student is on a borderline (the definition of `borderline' is given in the Assessment Regulations). I am linking to a discussion of those extra considerations.

The MInf 4th year students have all their course marks (and progression decision for entry to 5th year) considered by the 4th year Exam Boards. The rules for progression to 5th year of the MInf are that the student obtains an average of 40% at the first attempt across courses taken in fourth year, and also passes both MInf Project Planning and MInf Project Phase 1 on a individual basis. In due course, when they complete year 5, the decisions on their degree classificiation will be made by the appropriate Exam Board. Issues Note that the MInf Exam Board is at the moment, part of the This page is an update (Sept 2012) to the "Old-style webpages" version of the ug4 Course Guide, for consistency. --Mary Cryan


Home : Teaching : Years : Ug4 

Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: school-office@inf.ed.ac.uk
Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections. Logging and Cookies
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh