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My son has recieved a conditional offer from Napier :D

Good for him, whats it to do if you dont mind me asking, cause its where I am and I can vouch for it being a hell of a lot better than people think. Well certain faculties certainly.

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Bloody hell how long are they?

Four or five were 1000 words, and the rest were 1500 words. So not particularly long, but when the lectures offer nothing more than what is on the fairly basic slides, it's difficult to structure an essay of any length (IMO) around a few pages from a book.

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By contrast, fourth year isn't too bad - especially if you do two numerical subjects and don't have to do a dissertation :D

I've found I've become extremely lax this year. Got two modules which each have an essay each and an exam. Essays are both due on the same day (over a month away yet) and because it seems like such little work all I've done is go to my two tutorials each week. Suddenly realised when reading over the lecture notes (as I haven't got round to buying the books yet) for my class on Monday that I have absolutely no idea what any of it means.

Think I'll just work hard for two weeks for the essays then hard for a week before the exams.

Seems a world away from the start of third year.

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And finally, my exams have been posted. I'm in on the 16th, 18th, 19th and 20th of May, that's right. Exam on the Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of that week

We had two in the first week, then four in the second week for our January exams in 3rd year... I only started studying for them on the Saturday as that's when I got back from New Zealand... <_<

Managed to pass the first five, but the final exam I could only work on the night before and fell asleep after 15 minutes so failed (luckily it was only part of the module so brought the mark up with the second part in May).

This time round we have...

May 4: Acoustics

May 5: Fundamentals of Environmental Forensics

May 18: Environmental Engineering 2 (got 51% for the first part)

May 26: Meat Hygiene practical exam (@ Glasgow uni vet school)

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Absolute nightmare of a year for me.

Can't find a placement for next year which is totally making me put off work for this year. Had to do a 6000 word essay and various presentations so far this year.. argh.

What do you guys study? I'm a third year chemist.

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He is doing buisness management.

I know I'll sound like a geek, but I actually enjoy the course, and pretty much hate everything else I do.

It's certainly makes a lot more sense than the abstract pish you learn in Politics and it also has a very high graduate employability rate.

It's a good course to do, Dunno what it'll be like at Napier though, I think Jack Ross studied business there, which is, I dunno, a plus?

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Might have posted this earlier, but i can't remember laugh.gif

But aye, I got a conditional offer to do Architecture at Dundee Uni :) Two B's to get in, and i got an A and a B in my prelims, so aye, not too shabby biggrin.gif

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What is the standard marking procedure for an overwritten essay? The suggested length is 2500-3000 words but I'm 2250 in with another three major topics to discuss, if I keep things succinct I might break in under 4000.

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What is the standard marking procedure for an overwritten essay? The suggested length is 2500-3000 words but I'm 2250 in with another three major topics to discuss, if I keep things succinct I might break in under 4000.

One of my tutors said that an unwritten rule was 5% off for every 250 words you go over the limit. Will probably change from Uni to Uni though.

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What is the standard marking procedure for an overwritten essay? The suggested length is 2500-3000 words but I'm 2250 in with another three major topics to discuss, if I keep things succinct I might break in under 4000.

I'd imagine there will be an official University policy. At Glasgow if you exceed the stated word limit by 10% no penalty is applied, but if you exceed it by 20% you are docked (IIRC) one grade point (which is about 4.5 grade points); 30% you're docked two grade points (9%) and more than 30% they refuse to mark it. Some departments adapt that policy and state a threshold over which they will refuse to mark an essay.

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Well I've cut all the fat from my introduction and two paragraphs and it's still 2100 words. There is no possible way to engage with the source material and explain the main aspects of the question within their limit.

Hopefully as it's Finlay's department no-one will notice.

Edited by vikingTON
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Well I've cut all the fat from my introduction and two paragraphs and it's still 2100 words. There is no possible way to engage with the source material and explain the main aspects of the question within their limit.

Hopefully as it's Finlay's department no-one will notice.

I handed in an assignment for economics the other day which was a good 800 words over the world limit purely because I seen no possible way to keep it to what they were asking. I'm hoping they aren't too strict about it because from the people I was speaking to quite a few seemed to be in the same boat.

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Well I've cut all the fat from my introduction and two paragraphs and it's still 2100 words. There is no possible way to engage with the source material and explain the main aspects of the question within their limit.

Hopefully as it's Finlay's department no-one will notice.

Have you tried replacing the likes of "it is" and "it has" with "it's"?

Pretty vulgar I know, but I've used it as a last resort before and chopped 50-100 words off of my total.

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What is the standard marking procedure for an overwritten essay? The suggested length is 2500-3000 words but I'm 2250 in with another three major topics to discuss, if I keep things succinct I might break in under 4000.

I actually emailed the course administrator about this as the course guide said maximum 2500, and even underlined and put it in red, but the cover sheet for the essay said you could go 10-25% above before incurring a penalty.

So the reply was 'the word count procedure is very clear, the maximum word count is 2748 and we expect students to comply.'

Er, what? The course has given three different answers, and the third one is so abstract it looks like you've just made it up. Why the f**k would it be 2748? Why not just make it 10% above and 2750?

And she concluded by saying she could not tell me if I would incur a penalty because it was down to the discretion of the individual marker - and I emailed the marker a separate question last week and he hasn't responded. He answered something else so its the right email address but why wouldn't you check your emails in the week before an assignment?

And I'm in the thoroughly bizarre situation of having to find £4'000 by next week or incur an 'unknown' fee laugh.gif. It sounds like a shakedown, they are just making it up as they go along.

But I've been unexpectedly organised this term and pretty much had the essay completed last week and its due in for Thursday. For once I think it's good, which will probably mean it will do shit. There's a 90-100% chance Turnitin will crash in the next two days.

I have my last ever lecture tomorrow.

I'm going to buy a box of chocolates or something to pass round everybody.

It will probably disrupt the lecture.

I'd imagine there will be an official University policy. At Glasgow if you exceed the stated word limit by 10% no penalty is applied, but if you exceed it by 20% you are docked (IIRC) one grade point (which is about 4.5 grade points); 30% you're docked two grade points (9%) and more than 30% they refuse to mark it. Some departments adapt that policy and state a threshold over which they will refuse to mark an essay.

I've never heard of any of that, sounds like a law thing.

Politics did say something about handing essays back unmarked but Politics is the kind of department to hand out hollow threats.

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