To be gutted at this grade for my dissertation proposal?

[goodgradeshavewine]

I'm in my third year at uni and worked so hard at my research and inquiry module, I worked really really hard and found it fairly easy because I'd been putting in the work for it.

Anyways I submitted my dissertation proposal 4 weeks ago and got results back this morning. I thought I would at least be mid 60s as I truly thought it was a well put together and thought out dissertation plan. I only got 60 %.

I'm totally gutted, I know that still leaves me in the 2.1 range but only just. I'm frustrated because my other module that I didn't follow nor understand I got higher results for both my assessments in that. Overall for this term I am sitting at 63 percent.

I'm just so upset and like demotivated now. At one point in the feedback he says I spoke in a detached manner and that it must have been difficult for me to write in the third person. I literally have an email from him confirming I was to write in the third person...on top of that my friend that really rushed hers got a first. We have different markers but the marking just seems so random at my uni.

AIBU to be so gutted about my grade? Am I being pathetic?

@iamagruff

She's in third year, she's barely scraping a 2.1, it's only going to get more difficult from here on out...she's not on a good track.

She's on track for a 2:1. What's wrong with that?

You do understand that each year of uni is an academic level higher, so the difference between GCSEs and A levels - those jumps every year.

If you got a B at GCSE would you say someone getting less than an A a year later was failing and should cut their losses?

Odd. Maybe leave the uni advice to those who know what they're talking about eh?

@titchy if she's barely scraping a 2.1 in her third year then chances are she will go below a 2.1 in fourth year which is a level up. Doh!

Shimy I got a 60 in my proposal but have finished the year with a 63 percent overall, if that makes a difference to you.

No, it doesn’t make a difference to me, it’s still a decent 2.1 and
iamagruff is being a knob.

@Shimy sorry, that was for @iamagruff not you.

[quote iamagruff]@titchy if she's barely scraping a 2.1 in her third year then chances are she will go below a 2.1 in fourth year which is a level up. Doh! [/quote]
If I were you I’d just stop talking rubbish. It’s making you look very foolish.

[quote goodgradeshavewine]@Shimy I got a 60 in my proposal but have finished the year with a 63 percent overall, if that makes a difference to you.

@ErickBroch yes, so this is my proposal, what I propose to do for my dissertation next term. Yes, now I've let some time passed and have calmed down I can see how this isn't the end of the world like I thought. I'm going to follow the feedback and as people have suggested on here do some further reading etc during the summer so I can get to grips with the academic writing which is expected of me. I'm feeling much better now, thanks.

Thanks to all the kind posters, sorry if I came across as a bitter knob in OP. [/quote]
Good for you - you're there to learn, there would be no point if you already knew it all. Your supervisor / tutor will probably be very happy to help if you ask for clarification of any points in the feedback, or any direction for your wider reading. There's also loads of research out there about how to produce effective survey questionnaires and how to conduct interviews to get useful qualititative data. And don't shy away from the stats either - they're not fun, but you'll need to embrace the buggers if you want to get better marks next time.

Another academic here. I agree with PPs who have said that this looks like thorough, helpful feedback, and reading between the lines, it sounds like it was a good solid proposal, lots of potential, with some areas that still need to be worked out better. With that feedback, you should be able to make sure that those points are covered in your dissertation: it's good to know what your weak areas are likely to be, so that you can make sure to shore them up! When you work on each section of the dissertation, look back at the feedback and ask yourself, "Did I address that criticism?"

Many students get hung up on minor critiques of writing style. Unless you're completely incoherent, it won't make or break your dissertation (although writing well will generally put your markers in a more benign frame of mind...). Your lecturers are trying to help you develop a style which is appropriate to your field of study (in my particular field, the advice about avoiding the first person is increasingly considered old-fashioned, but in others, it's absolutely the done thing): the simplest advice here is to read, and read LOTS. So: while a good style will help, your content and arguments are far more important, as is a strong structure.

As for the PP who suggests that a single mark in the lower 2.1s should make you throw in the towel, I'll add my voice to those who say that that's utter nonsense. First, a 2.1 is a very good degree. Second, even someone who will end up with a First can occasionally get a lower, or even much lower, mark. Third, it's bollocks to say that your fourth-year marks will necessarily be lower than your previous ones. In my experience (having just emerged from my umpteenth exam board), many students achieve roughly the same level of marks throughout their degrees. Some really hit their stride later in their degree (hence why we can look at so-called "exit velocity" as an argument for bumping someone up a degree classification), and some seem to lose steam a little. But for the most part, if you're performing at 2.1-y level now, there's no reason to suppose that you won't be able to keep that up!

@TeenMinusTests

ps Please make sure you ask for the sex of respondents. If you must then ask for gender as well, but sex differentials will be important for this kind of research.

Oh do knock it off with the shoehorning in of the anti trans agenda

@iamagruff
What a load of utter guff. And I got a first, before you make any assumptions about sour grapes

if she's barely scraping a 2.1 in her third year then chances are she will go below a 2.1 in fourth year which is a level up. Doh!

No. You adjust the mark for the level you're marking at. So what would be a 2:1 in your second year would not be quite as advanced as a 2:1 in your third year, because you mark allowing for that extra year of study. Otherwise people starting out in their first year would almost all be around the level of a third or a pass and would probably be dropping out in despair. As a pp said you do get some exit trajectory with some people but on the whole people remain fairly steadily on track.

I'm not sure "Iamagruff* is right. Dd scraped a 2.1 in year 1 and 2 and really clicked in year 3 and ended up with a really high 2.1

Not sure why people are saying you can't improve your grade

[quote iamagruff]@titchy if she's barely scraping a 2.1 in her third year then chances are she will go below a 2.1 in fourth year which is a level up. Doh! [/quote]
😂 How funny. Uni doesn't get 'harder' in terms of grading each year. If you handed in a piece of work for a module in first year and got a 2:1, you'd still get a 2:1 if you decided to take that module in your third year instead. They don't go 'oh you're a third year now so we'll give this piece a different grade' 😂 you're working at a 2:1 standard, or you aren't.

if someone in my place of work or my professor told me to stop 'whining' I wouldn't be impressed and would certainly submit a complaint.

Out of everything you’ve said OP, this is the most concerning. What exactly would the complaint be? “It’s mean”? It’s something that you will of course come to understand more as you grow up but life is full of criticism and people who are blunt and to the point. You need to get used to that if you are to succeed and taking constructive and useful feedback like you’ve received from your tutor and actually listening to that is the first step. The next step would be understanding that “stop whining” I. The context of work or university means, you’re wrong/I’m your senior and you’ve been told to do something whether you like it/agree or not and so get on with it.

We soon learnt to write assignments based on who was marking it. Some prefered descriptions, diagrams and waffle, others; almost a list.

However most academics were more than happy to give feedback, so i would ask for it. Writing style would cost some marks however there will have been a marking criteria which will give marks for each pertinent point covered. So feedback is vital to make sure you are focusing on the right things and not wasting time and effort on bits that wont carry much weight .

How funny. Uni doesn't get 'harder' in terms of grading each year. If you handed in a piece of work for a module in first year and got a 2:1, you'd still get a 2:1 if you decided to take that module in your third year instead. They don't go 'oh you're a third year now so we'll give this piece a different grade' 😂 you're working at a 2:1 standard, or you aren't.

Not at the universities I've worked at. You extrapolate for the extra years of study. I wouldn't expect a first year student to be working at the level of a 2:1 third year student - otherwise there wouldn't be much point in all the training. First year work looks very different from third year work, or it should. You expect an extra two years of intellectual development and study and mark accordingly. It's laid out in black and white in the marking criteria that you allow for the year that you're marking.

[quote iamagruff]@titchy if she's barely scraping a 2.1 in her third year then chances are she will go below a 2.1 in fourth year which is a level up. Doh! [/quote]
Why are you extrapolating a degree classification from one piece of work?

You should work in a university - no need to do anything other than mark one piece of work then we know what degrees to award - brilliant! So little marking, learning, teaching, developing!

On the other hand, maybe you could leave the advice to those that actually know what they're talking about.

@BertramLacey

How funny. Uni doesn't get 'harder' in terms of grading each year. If you handed in a piece of work for a module in first year and got a 2:1, you'd still get a 2:1 if you decided to take that module in your third year instead. They don't go 'oh you're a third year now so we'll give this piece a different grade' 😂 you're working at a 2:1 standard, or you aren't.

Not at the universities I've worked at. You extrapolate for the extra years of study. I wouldn't expect a first year student to be working at the level of a 2:1 third year student - otherwise there wouldn't be much point in all the training. First year work looks very different from third year work, or it should. You expect an extra two years of intellectual development and study and mark accordingly. It's laid out in black and white in the marking criteria that you allow for the year that you're marking.

That's completely at odds with my experience. Are you able to link to any grading system that advises markers to account for the year of study? Most are online for transparency proposes. At most universities, the lower grades people tend to get in their first year are counterbalanced by the weighting system. So for instance in my university, only your top 2 module results in your first year get incorporated towards your overall degree classification. In others your first year is worth 10%, second 30% and third 60%.

I'd expect of it was 'easier' to get a 2:1 in first year there wouldn't be any reason to do this.

It sounds as if you were too close, and too involved with this piece of work, plus it was a preferred subject.
This may have led you to put more value on it than an objective marker was going to.
It is discouraging to get a lower mark than you thought the work was worth, but in the end that's life, and one day soon this just won't seem or be important.

@FatJan I've been out of the UK system for about ten years now. And also I'm afraid I have other things to do than find links to this stuff now. It may well have changed in the time I've been out of this. Also the way degrees are assessed has changed both in the time I was working in academia and since I've left it. The marks for my first year of study in no way contributed to the final degree result, for example. They are recorded on my transcript but did not make part of the final grade.

If you're weighting towards third year results, that is an acknowledgement that people improve as they study. When I marked, the work was less likely to be part of the final mark and you marked according to the year the student was in. It would have been soul destroying to mark an 18 year old fresh out of A' levels to the same standard as a 21 year old who had studied for three years, so we didn't do it.

@dreamingbohemian

That's a great amount of feedback!

I suggest looking at it positively. If you can get a 60 despite having some rather serious flaws in there, then if you fix those flaws you should do rather well.

This...

I think you did well to get 60..there must have been some good points...they critiqued KEY areas ... I'm assuming you're doing a social science type degree?

From your feedback it gives clear development points in the relevant sections ... So if you address these... You should do rather better than 60 in the final dissertation?!

Hard work and grade ARE NOT perfectly correlated.there's a whole academic area in student assessment that show this.

Some of my best uni work was done in a rush... Other essays where I spent loads of effort... Less so!

It sounds like you have missed key areas, but the areas you have addressed were done well (bar the third person mix-up). It might be helpful to have to marking matrix beside your work and make sure you have covered it. For example, my degree was in social studies. The marking matrix always had something about 'acknowledging racial diversity' so I always made sure I had at least a paragraph or two that highlighted the impact of race on the subject. They didn't often form the main arguments (unless the essay was about race in some way) but it let the marker tick the box.

If you're doing sensitive research, then GDPR is a big consideration. Even one line about 'ensuring GDPR compliance' would tip the balance. By looking at barriers to participation, you can cover barriers to engagement for different groups of society, then take that on to show an understanding of how your analysis may be skewed as a result. If black professionals have already faced barriers in their workplace, they are going to be less inclined to admit to drinking, in case it jeopardises their career. But, at the same time, they may be a group who turn to alcohol more because they face more workplace stress, so by losing their participation you will have even poorer quality data.

Keep going - it sounds fascinating

@FatJan in Scotland we have the SCQF framework which details the expected standards for all level of qualifications. A degree moves through SCQF level 7 to 10 and there are very different expectations when grading a first year assessment to an honours year one.

I’d expect this to be the same in any uni tbh as you build on learning in previous years, the ideas become more complex and the expectations raise as a result sureky?

Surely it's the content of the assignments and the marking criteria that varies between years rather than leniency in marking solely based on year of study? I mean you'd expect the standard and knowledge to build as you progress through the years, but that you'd probably still be working at a similar standard for that point in the course? (If that makes sense). In primary school when you learn to write, the tasks start off simple and build in difficulty, but that child would likely be working around a similar level in respect to the stage of learning they're at.

The marking criteria according to the SCQF would in itself be less demanding/ more lenient for first year than third year though.

Are we talking cross purposes somehow?

Ah with you! Usually you see tough consistency across a student , sometimes people dip as they struggle with the harder criteria, sometimes they “get it” and improve a lot, sometimes they struggle with one particular module 🤷🏻‍♀️