Urgent advice wanted - dd at uni about to hand in essays late and lose 5 marks for each - should she speak to tutor?

[Mumofunibaby]

Just that. My dd is in her 2nd year at uni and had 3 essays due together (2 yesterday, one today). She got in a right state and handed in 1 essay a few hours late yesterday, the second she is just finishing now (was also due by 2pm yesterday) and as a result, the third essay due today will also now be a few hours late.

The problem is that her uni deducts 5 marks per 24 hours an essay is late. So she is likely to lose 3 x 5 marks in total. Which is a lot. And a real shame as she just scraped a first in her first year grades, but could end up with a 2.2 in her final degree now.

She is dyslexic but hasn't registered as such at uni, partly because she struggled to organise a dyslexia assessment during lockdown.

Could anyone with recent uni experience or who is a tutor please advise - is it worth her contacting her personal or subject tutors to ask for some leniency? She says there is no point as they won't give any and stress you lose 5 marks if your essay is 1 minute late, let alone a few hours. But that does seem really harsh, as it's basically because they've all come at once so being late with the first one has had a domino effect on all the others.

She is very stressed and has been in floods of tears about this.

All suggestions appreciated. Thank you!

Unfortunately - unless you're going to drip feed and say she's been really sick/someone close to her has been really sick, it seems to be a time management issue.
Having essays due really close together is common, but these essays would have been set weeks ago. She could have done them, well and on time if she'd started sooner.
She's being penalised appropriately fore time management and organisation which is an important skill to learn.
If she's rushed 3 essays in 3 days then she's also likely to be handing in poor work and will get lower grades.
Without mitigating factors (illness) the uni shouldn't bend their policy on this. Its there for a reason.
Sorry.

Has your DD asked for your help to solve her problem?

If she is a second year, she really needs to work this out on her own. You arent doing her any favours long term by helicoptering her (as much as you want to because they are always your babies). Maybe loosing the marks will mean she steps up and get organized and is more successful on her own going forward…

Maybe you could help by asking her questions to help her work out what she wants to do/feels would work. Then after the dust has settled ask her what she learned from the situation and what she plans to do differently/the same going forward

Why are the essays late? Presumably they are summative pieces. I would contact the person with overall responsibility for assessment and explain if there are any extenuating circumstances. Is the lateness dyslexia related? I would still push for an assessment/registration as it may help with final exams. However, getting oneself into a lather and doing work at the last minute is unlikely to count.

I would hand the essays in now and take the late penalty; but contact tutors and student support services to arrange for additional support with her dyslexia. At my university last minute reprieves were rarely granted as students would have known long in advance of the deadline that they weren’t going to meet it, and that was the point wt which to ask for extenuating circs. Better to hand the work in and then discuss- but others may have different advice

The best thing to do is to get in touch with her university disability service and discuss progress in getting adjustments for her dyslexia. Then it might be worth submitting a special circumstances case for these assessments (or what ever they are called there). We might consider waiving late penalties if the student was later given extra time in assessments by the disability service. Generally we would not waive penalties without a special circs submission. The question she must answer is why she was unable to submit this work on time. Lecturers at my university cannot remove late penalties. This is done formally by the exam board. In future she should try asking for extensions if she has a good reason for late submission.

I think it would be best for her to contact student services first to see what support they can offer. I think it’s unlikely the uni will reimburse the marks now, she should have raised her issues before the deadline not after.

However, it’s not too late to put in place support for future assignments.

Is she in second or third year?

What year is she in? Will it really bump her down from a first to a 2:2? That seems a lot based on only three essays?

Genuine question: does the dyslexia impact on her time management? If she can evidence that in some way, it's maybe worth doing but otherwise it's late and that's the penalty.

If you want to help her, helping her think about what she will do differently next time would be what I would do

So you say she is dyslexic but hasnt actually been assessed so she has no formal diagnosis.

She would have had weeks to complete her essays. So she needs to speak to her tutor to explain the reason for the delay. They tend to be quite strict.

Sorry, but your daughter has to deal with the consequences of her disorganization and lack of preparedness. Hopefully, she'll learn from it.

She should apply for extensions if she’s struggling to meet the deadline. The uni won’t bend the rules for her and why should they, dyslexia isn’t an excuse for poor time management.

I did this recently. No advice sorry, but it was utterly heartbreaking so have great sympathy for your daughter!

I'm a uni lecturer. First, I would say this sounds like extremely bad planning from her department. In mine, we make every effort to ensure that deadlines are spaced out.
But... if a student misses a deadline, they are penalised. There is no scope for leniency. Students can apply for extensions for coursework, but they need a good reason and have to apply well before the deadline. A dyslexia assessment would also make no difference to the deadline - although other support would be in place and we would take dyslexia into account when marking the work.
Unfortunately deadlines are deadlines. How long was she given for the assessment? We normally publish essay titles between 4 and 8 weeks in advance of deadlines.
(of course, this all applies only to my uni, and might be different elsewhere)

Why didn’t she ask for extensions when it was clear she was going to miss the deadline?

As others have said she'd have to deal with fine management. Unis have loads of dyslexia support abs sone local governments have schemes for things like computers or software to help
You say loses 5 marks, but what percentage is that? If it's scored out of 10 then that's bad but if out of 100 that's only 5% off
My uni used to drop your score to 40% (scrape pass) for late work so probs not that bad

Why are the essays late? I’ve never known people to get extra time because of dyslexia. Reasonable adjustments for dyslexia would normally be things like dyslexia-friendly fonts and page colours, text-to-audio software that can read things out loud, verbal instructions not just written, etc. Not an extension of the time allowed to do the work.

Why is everyone assuming that OPs daughter didn’t have extensions?

Has she got an actual dyslexia diagnosis even from school?

She needs to contact student support (might be disability services depending on what they call it) and engage with whatever process they have.

For these assignments she should submit an exceptional circumstances form (might be called something else - if she looks she should find it) and fill in with any evidence her reason for being late with these assignments.

Ultimately though - she’s 2nd year and she’s had how long to do them?

Many years as uni administrator here. I think she should speak to her personal tutor, and whoever deals with the Dyslexia assessments in her uni. She absolutely should arrange an assessment, they provide all sorts of help. In my uni, dyslexic students were given a mac book, a personal essay writing assistant who would help them formulate their ideas into words, and vouchers for extra kit like books and dictation software.

There are 'extenuating circumstances' and deadline extension forms that students can fill in if they're handing in work late. Don't think that these are for very rare occasions, some students fill them in for every single essay with all sorts of excuses - they're usually accepted and extensions given.

How you have explained it is useful. She could tell her tutor that she thinks her disability is such that she felt too overwhelmed and confused to arrange a Dyslexia assessment, but would now like some support getting it arranged.

Echoing everyone else, learning time management is part of university. Barring sudden illness or unexpected events/bereavements etc a deadline is a deadline, and often they do bunch up.

Unless she’s got a genuine reason that they were late then she’s just gonna have to accept it. Part of uni is learning time management.

She could have asked for an extension even without a diagnosis but seems to have left it late. Can she speak to Student Support department about arranging assessments and support for future workload. Has she ever been assessed for dyslexia?

Uni lecturer here.

I know it seems harsh, but many universities have the same policy. A deadline is a deadline. The problem with allowing it to be a a few minutes or a couple of hours late is where do you draw the line? What if they allow an hour, but somebody is 61 minutes late? They're then also going to feel it's harsh.

And when they have maybe a couple of hundred students, they can't take each on a case by case basis. So they have a blanket rule, end of. Most of the students doing her course will have handed them all in on time. She will have been given the essays some time ago, not all of them last week, and the university will simply see it as a matter of time management.

Why did she get in such a state? That may or may not be relevant. A former colleague of mine, as an undergraduate, lost her grandmother which understandably threw her and two essays were late. But even in that circumstance, no allowance was made. She had to suffer the penalty for late submission.

If she has a very good reason for getting in a state, the university will probably have a system called mitigating circumstances. This will be a panel made up of academic staff from all over the university, not her course tutors, who will consider an appeal. But they will be very tough on the reasons given for the lateness, and 'got in a state' won't be enough.

If she is dyslexic, it is well worth registering it with the university. They may have a disability office which - at least in my uni - will arrange for an assessment for her. The university will receive a report from the assessor, which will state the adjustments she needs. This may include 10% or 25% or whatever extra time to submit essays or in exams. But it is, I'm afraid, too late for that to apply to her current submissions.

Thanks. Yes, she has had weeks to do these essays. So it's not that it's a surprise. But she certainly hasn't just left them to the last minute to start - she's been working on them for weeks, all through the Christmas holidays (barely had a day off). She is very conscientious and gets stressed trying to make them perfect.

She has been late with one essay before (and took the 5 mark hit without complaining, as she assumed it would be a one off). But I feel awful for her as with that, this is now going to be 20 marks she's lost, and her final degree classification is based on performance in essays - there are no final exams for her to redeem herself in.

Her essays are excellent (as I said, she got a first last year). But she clearly struggles with time management, and I don't know whether that's related to her dyslexia, or to stress or what...

We are certainly encouraging her to seek help with time management and dyslexia going forwards. Part of the problem is that the dyslexia makes it hard for her to navigate accessing the dyslexia support system and filling in the correct forms etc, IYSWIM.

Thanks so much for all the advice.

At my uni - only a couple of years ago - you were encouraged to speak to the tutor if you were struggling, absolutely. Before the essays were due in. Not after. We were deducted 10% if up to 24 hours late, there was no leniency unless mitigating circumstances were applied.

When were these essays set? When did she start working on them? Did she already warn the tutor she was struggling?

Unless there’s a massive backstory not mentioned in your post, I’m sorry but this sounds like she simply didn’t get organised properly.