Serious problems affecting your study
If you have a serious problem affecting your study, coursework, or examinations:
Undergraduate Students: In the first instance contact your Personal Tutor. You can also contact the Senior Tutor, Prof. Kristel Fobelets, as soon as possible. Prof. Fobelets' office hours are Monday 13:00-14:00, room 714, 7th floor EEE building.
MSc students: please contact your Course Director or the Postgraduate Senior Tutor, Dr Javier Barria.
If you need to speak to someone urgently about your Mental Health, you can find information at Imperial's Student Support Zone. During workdays, Mon-Fri you can also contact the student wellbeing advisor Ms. Kelly Greenwood.
MC widget
- Students needing additional support - help to prevent the need for mitigation
- Extensions and Mitigating Circumstances
- Late Mitigating Circumstances claims
If you have a condition that requires additional support, then we encourage you to set-up this support at the start of the academic year.
You need to register with a medical practice during your time with us. We recommend you register with the Imperial College Health Centre unless you live far away or at home.
Setting up help to prevent the need for mitigation
New students – if you received help at school with study approaches and examinations, please contact Ms. Emma Rainbow, the Department Disabilities Officer to discuss and set-up the necessary support for your studies with us.
Continuing students – if there are any changes in your need for support that we should be aware of, e.g. special exam arrangements, additional study support, please contact Ms. Emma Rainbow, the Department Disabilities Officer.
An unexpected event, outside your control has happened and is affecting your academic performance.
In first instance, contact your personal tutor for advice.
Short term impact
Sometimes events happen that are outside your control and interfere with your performance. If it is something that is short time that prevents you to e.g. submit your coursework on time, then you many request an extension. Extensions requests are sent to the Associate Senior Tutor Prof. Zahid Durrani. Office hour is: Thursdays, 1-2 PM in Room 704, 7th Floor EEE Building.
Find out more about Extensions.
Longer term impact
Sometimes unexpected events happen that have a direct impact on your ability to sit an exam or that have a long-term impact on your ability to study, or sit assessments, which cannot be mitigated via special exam arrangements, or study support, or extensions to deadlines.
Imperial provides information to help you decide if an event can be considered a mitigating circumstance. If you think you have a case, then you can submit a mitigating circumstances claim on our department's MC app. Claims must be submitted via the Department's app, please do not use the form on the Imperial Mitigating Circumstances page. You are required to submit professional evidence for your claim. You can contact the Senior Tutor, Prof. Kristel Fobelets for more information.
What happens when you submit a mitigating circumstances claim on the app?
The MC app is monitored and the student support team: Senior Tutor, Associate Senior Tutor, Student Wellbeing Advisor and Department Disabilities Officer will meet to evaluate the claim, check the evidence and make recommendations to the Mitigating Circumstances Board (MCB). In most cases, the student support team will be able to make decisions.
Either your claim is rejected because it is deemed not a mitigating circumstance (unexpected, outside your control and having an impact on performance) or does not have acceptable evidence.
Your claim is accepted if the conditions for mitigating circumstances are met and evidence provided.
An accepted claim does not yet define what actions will be taken, it just means that we accept that something unexpected and unforeseen has happened to you. The action that can be taken will depend on the impact the MC event had on your academic achievement. For instance, if an assessment is failed due to MCs, a fresh assessment for uncapped marks can be offered at the next available assessment opportunity. Where an assessment is not failed, no action will be taken but your case will be considered by the Board of Examiners upon graduation when your marks is not more than 5% from a grade boundary. Another action can be to put special exam arrangements in place for future assessments. This will be determined at the time assessment marks are submitted and will need to be approved by the MCB. Note that approved MCs cannot add marks, thus it is always better to find help early.
A claim can also remain pending if we are awaiting evidence or if due to its complexity it needs to be decided by the MCB. The MCB comes together once a term. Pending claims will be automatically removed from the database when evidence remains unavailable after a month of submission.
Another action can be to put special exam arrangements in place for future assessments.
Submitting a mitigating circumstances (MC) claim more than 10 days after the assessment deadline or after the marks have been released (if this is sooner than the 10 days deadline), then the MC claim is considered late. These claims will be considered under the late MC regulations (see section 10 of the regulations).
- As part of a late MC claim you must provide a credible and compelling reason(s) for the late submission and independent documentary evidence to support the lateness of the claim. This is in addition to the evidence that supports the event(s) that led to the need for MC considerations. A late MC claim can be rejected based on insufficient evidence justifying the lateness of the claim or on MC evidence that does not fall under the MC description of being unexpected, unavoidable and having a large impact.
- The final deadline for a late claim to be made is no more than 10 working days after receiving the formal result from the Department at the end of the year of study. The formal results date is the date after the Board of Examiners’ meeting (1st Friday of July or 2nd Friday of Sept (resits) on which the Department informs you that you stand failed in a module. Claims submitted after this final deadline will not be accepted.
- If new evidence comes to light following a rejected claim, the late submission route may be followed subject to the rules set out above.
Where late claims are rejected, you have the right to appeal. Please read the conditions under which appeals can be considered carefully (see section 11 of the regulations). You can contact your personal tutor or senior tutor for more information.
