Assessments and examinations

Final Year

1. BSc degrees
The award of an Honours Degree in the School of Biological Sciences involves assessment of first year units (10% of total), second year units (30% of total), and final year lecture/practical units, project/practicals and examinations specific to a particular Degree Programme.  For examination purposes, all your final year work is divided into 12 units, each contributing 5% (total 60%) to the final degree marks.  The precise allocation of these units to different types of work will vary between Degree Programmes but will fall within specific guidelines.  The allocation of marks is as follows:

(See Section Degree Programme requirements)

Note: The split of assessment will be 33% of the total for second year units and 67% of the total for final year units. This will give a split of 11.7% for special programme problem/essay papers, 33.50% for lecture/practical units, and 22.33% for the research project and literature review.

a) Students on four-year BSc degrees (with industrial/professional experience or with a language) are assessed on their work in the year away from the University. This contributes an additional 10% to make a total out of 110% i.e. the placement report is calculated as contributing 10 marks out of 110 (10 from yr1 + 30 from yr2 +60 from final yr +10 from placement report); this is then scaled down to 100 to give a percentage.

For example: the calculation for a student who achieved the following marks in each year would be:

Yr1 = overall mark of 67
Yr2 = overall mark of 65
Placement report = overall mark of 71
Final yr = overall mark of 72

(10% of 67) + (30% of 65) + (60% of 72) + (10% of 71) = 76.5/110 * 100 = 69.5%

If the mark for the report is anywhere below 40%, this  does not mean that transfer back to the three year  degree will occur since all credits for the placement year  are awarded for the successful completion  of the placement. A referral for a failed report is also  not possible since the assessment is at final  level. Reversion to the three year honours programme will only occur in  the exceptional  circumstances where a placement could not be completed to  the satisfaction of the examiners, or other reasons such  as illness.

b) Combined honours degrees
For all students on a combined honours programme (i.e. Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology and Biological Science degrees with a language) their psychology or language units are combined with their biological sciences units.