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Informatics Fourth Year Honours Course Guide
On a Borderline (degree classification)

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).

For a Board of Examiners awarding degrees, 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). Examples of those considerations (in the context of the Informatics 4-year degree programmes), are given below. As year organiser I would strongly suggest to 4th year students that time/effort spent worrying about the particular details of `extra considerations' would be better devoted to ensuring the student doesn't land `on a borderline' ... .

If a mark falls within a borderline (ie, is close to but less than a boundary mark), the Board considers whether the degree classification should be awarded at the higher level. Note that the actual mark is not changed by this process. Boards take great care to ensure fairness and consistency both within years and across them. The following factors, among others, are normally considered when a case is looked at:

• The profile of the individual course marks.
• Has there been significant improvement from third to fourth year?
• The quality of the project, e.g., does it display signs of distinction?
• The relative difficulty of courses taken for that year (judged by the overall results on courses and the reports of the lecturers concerned).

Usually there is a combination of factors to consider and there is no expectation that all the above will apply to any one case.

These considerations should not be confused with possible compensation applied to mitigating circumstances (Special Circumstances are reported by the Personal Tutor of the student to the ITO). The Special Circumstances Committee meets before the Exam Board to consider all Special Circumstances cases and makes recommendations (for compensation) to the Board; however the final decision always rests with the Board.

Important.  Under the University's regulations, Boards of Examiners may, where appropriate, take account of information additional to the profile of marks listed above in deciding the final class awarded to any candidate.

This page is an update (Sept 2012) to the "Old-style webpages" version of the ug4 Course Guide, for consistency. --Mary Cryan