Frequently asked questions

If you are having serious problems coping with your work please see your year tutors or the Senior Tutor who will advise you.

However, don't forget that your personal tutor and your academic tutors are also there to help you. Whatever the situation, make sure you seek help in good time.

 The College's webpages have a study guide to help you and offer advice on teaching and learning. The Imperial Success Guide can be found on the Imperial website. You can download a PDF version from the linked page.

The only things you can bring into an exam are writing instruments (pens, pencils) and stationery items like erasers and rulers. You must also bring your College ID card so that we can verify your identity. Your ID card also carries your CID number.

You can also bring in notes such as lecture material, but electronic devices are not permitted.

You cannot bring in your own calculator or molecular modelling kits.

You will be supplied with the following items:-

• A list of constants
• A periodic table
• A calculator

You will be notified of official examination times by the department by email to your College account, so please check and read your emails. When this is done, you will also be informed of the location where you can find official regulations on the conduct of examinations.

The regulations will provide any more information you might need. You can find the link to instructions for candidates and other official information on the Registry website.

All students can see a selection of past paper questions on Blackboard in the Chem Central module. However, you must remember that the content of courses may change from year to year and also that the same course may have been given by a different lecturer in a previous year, so questions may not be completely relevant. The Department has uploaded an archive of past papers (re-sits are not included). You should also remember that outline answers are no substitute for proper revision and you should read the note of caution concerning outline answers.

Yes you can, provided that you supply the proper evidence.

Applications for extra time in exams are processed by Dr Charlotte Sutherell the Department Disabilties Officer for Chemistry. Applications for extra time must go through a process that has several steps and can take several weeks so if you think you will need extra time, contact Dr Sutherell immediately.

You should contact the course supervisor or lab coordinator, your year tutors and the Senior Tutor.

You MUST have a satisfactory medical certificate to cover the relevant dates.

You should discuss the required documentation with the Senior Tutor. If you can provide suitable evidence, your absence from the exam will not count as an attempt at the paper and you will normally be allowed to sit the exam at the next available date for full credit.

Note that doctors are normally unwilling to give a medical certificate retrospectively. Unless you are totally unable to do the paper for medical reasons, you are expected to take it. If you are slightly unwell but still able to take an exam we will make note of this and it will be taken into account when your degree result is considered.

Your illness may be short-lived (coughing more than usual, for example) and after a short rest you may feel able to continue and finish the exam.

Normally you would be allowed some extra time to make up for the time that you missed. If you feel unable to finish the exam then you would be asked to go to the Health Centre to see a Doctor and get a medical certificate. The certificate should then be given to the Senior Tutor and assuming everything is satisfactory, you would be allowed to re-sit the exam at the first available opportunity, for full credit. Information on full credit is provided below.

Different papers have different numbers of questions and marks, but the mark total is scaled to obtain a percentage. For example, if the exam paper has three questions worth 25 marks, then the maximum mark would be 75. The mark scored by a student for this exam would thus be multiplied by 4/3 to obtain a percentage.

Once all the marking is completed, an internal committee of the academic body including the Undergraduate Education Manager, the Heads of Teaching Section, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, the Senior Tutor, and all staff involved in setting and marking questions review the marks overall, both for each exam question set and also for each paper set. The committee may decide to moderate the marks for either an exam question (perhaps because it was deemed to be too difficult or too long) or an exam paper (again it may be decided that an exam paper was too long).

Instances of moderation are quite rare and will always be reviewed by the Examination Board meeting (which includes all staff and three external examiners) at the end of the Academic year. No other adjustments are made to marks. The Senior Tutor will bring to the attention of the meeting any problems that students might have experienced , such as illness, family bereavement and so on, that might have affected their performance and this is taken into account though the details are kept confidential.

If you answer more than the required number of questions your total mark for the exam will be the average of all the questions you answered.

In the IIIB exams you are required to answer 6 questions over two papers. If you answer more than the required number of questions your total mark for the exam will be the average of all the questions you answered.

The letter grades you are given when you first get your results correspond to the following ranges:

• <25 G (Bad Fail)
• <40 F (Fail )
• 40-49 D
• 50-59 C
• 60-69 B
• 70-100 A

For students in years 1 - 3 the pass mark is 40%. For students in years 4 - 5 the pass mark is 50%. 

The Registry is the official body allowed to issue actual marks to students. Departments are only allowed to issue letter grades. We do this so we can tell you how you have done quickly. The actual numbers will be supplied to the Registry by the Department. The Registry will then issue the marks to students at the end of the academic year.

The conditions for passing a given year are set out in the Scheme for the Award of Honours.

Read this document carefully so you know what you have to achieve for a given year and a given type of degree.

Your registry transcript supplies you with marks for each course component and year totals are quite easy to calculate using the information given in the Scheme for the Award of Honours.

Each year consists of various course components. Each course component has an associated unit value. There are 60 ECTS units in each year for most degree programmes and for each course component you will be given a mark. Your overall year total is thus given by: ∑{(Percentage mark for course element) x (unit value of element)}/60

The calculations and formulae are detailed in the Scheme for the Award of Honours. This sets out, for each degree type, the contribution to the year total from each course element.

For the F103 MSci programme, the year weighting is 6:16:29:29. A mark out of 100 is calculated for each year (see above) and then the year totals are combined in the ratio shown. For each student, a mark out of 1000 is calculated.

The degree classification depends on the total mark as defined in the table below.

A score below 400 would be a failed degree. 400-499 Third

500-599 Lower Second

600-699 Upper Second

700-1000 First Class

The College also defines borderline regions, which are 20 marks below each boundary. For example if you score between 680 and 699, then you are in the First Class / Upper Second borderline region. If you score between 580 and 599 then you are in the Upper Second / Lower Second borderline region and so on.

Examiners, especially the External Examiners carefully consider all candidates in the borderline region to see if there is a justification for promoting them to the next class of degree. This is where any extenuating circumstances which have been reported to the Senior Tutor can be taken into account, and where these apply students can be considered for promotion even if their degree total is not in a borderline. Please note that only the general nature of any problems is revealed to the meeting. The details will only be known to a very small group of staff, who themselves then attend the Examiners' Meeting, in order to maintain confidentiality.

All aspects of your academic performance are considered in detail before a decision is made. The External Examiners have access to all year totals and also to all of the final year work (exam answer booklets, project reports etc.) so that they can use this to assess whether or not a borderline candidate should be promoted. They discuss each borderline candidate in detail at the Examiners’ meeting.

Recommendations for degree classes ("Honours") are made to the Board of Examiners' Meeting, normally at the end of June, for consideration by the Academic Staff and External Examiners. At this meeting degrees are formally agreed.

No and no. In theory everyone graduating in a given year could be awarded a First Class degree. Equally, everyone graduating in a given year could be awarded a Third Class degree.

In reality the numbers go up and down a bit from year to year. Aside from very occasional moderation of a particular exam when the Examination Board feels it is warranted we do not adjust marks in any way.

Students on these programmes take masters level courses in lieu of the final year exam exam whilst abroad. These courses are examined by the host institution, typically by written or oral exams. We convert the results obtained to IC percentage marks according to the conversion table available on Blackboard.

No. As noted above, all exams are marked twice. There is also a substantial amount of checking that goes on once results are in. However if you think a mark is incorrect, contact the exams team (chemex@imperial.ac.uk) and the processing of the marks will be checked but exam scripts cannot be re-marked.

No. Exam answer booklets come into the sphere of Data Protection and the College's Data Protection policy. A student is not allowed to see the booklets themselves but is allowed to see any comments written on the script by an examiner. However this is not a simple process. An application has to be made to the Data Protection Officer and a fee paid and in the end, the comments may be un-enlightening.

Generally it is best to move on after an exam and focus on the exams to be taken in the future. If you want to know more about the Data Protection Act and the way it is implemented in College, then you can examine the webpages that deal with it.

You can ask your personal tutor to review your exam booklets and give you feedback on exam technique.

Scheme for the Award of Honours sets out the value of each course component for each year and the contribution that each year makes to the degree total for the different degree types. The Scheme is posted under course information on Chem Central.

No. If you have not qualified to continue to your next year of study, you must return to Imperial College to take your re-sit exams.

No. College regulations do not permit retakes of assessments that you have passed.

If after the August re-sit exams you still have not passed all course components, you will be asked to withdraw temporarily from College, but you can still return to take the relevant exams for one last time in the following academic year. If you then pass everything to proceed, you can return to College at the start of the next academic year after you achieve qualification to continue your degree.

Restricted credit is the pass mark (40%). If you fail an exam, you are normally given restricted credit for the re-sit unless there were documented extenuating circumstances for your failure (for example a severe illness).

If your extenuating circumstances are verified then you would normally sit the re-sit exam for full credit, so that your credited mark would be the mark that you actually obtained. For example, if you re-sit an exam on full credit and score 60% you will be credited with 60%. If however you re-sit an exam on restricted credit and score 60%, then your credited mark will be 40%. If you fail an exam, you are always credited with your mark, even if it is a fail. If you score less on a re-sit exam than you did on the original exam, you are credited with the higher mark.

You can re-sit an exam twice. Re-sits must be taken at the first available opportunity. The first opportunity to re-sit would be in the August following your initial failure. If you still did not pass, you can then re-sit one last time in the following academic year. Your two re-sit attempts are normally on the next two occasions on which the exam is offered and if you choose not to re-sit on one or both of those occasions, then you forfeit the attempt(s).

Exam questions are set by the person who gave the course. They are then reviewed by an internal departmental committee. So, for example, all the lecturers who teach a course on a first year module in year 1 will meet and read and critique each other's questions to make sure they are of the proper length and the wording is clear and unambiguous and so on.

The exam as a whole is reviewed o make sure it is not too long for the time allotted. All the exam papers are then sent to our External Examiners who are Professors at other Universities in the UK. The External Examiners read the papers and send corrections and comments. The question setters respond to the corrections and comments as necessary and then the paper content is finalised.

All exam questions are marked twice. Exam questions are first marked by the person who gave the lecture course. They are then given to a second marker who re-marks, checking that they agree with the marking and that the first marker has seen everything submitted.

If the markers disagree by one mark or less (out of 25), then the higher mark is always awarded, if they disagree by more than one mark, the markers meet to resolve the differences and to agree a mark.

The timetables and Key Dates document provided to you by the department have provisional exam week dates. You will be sent an official timetable by email by the department to your College email account.

Some exams such as Humanities exams and those in the Business School are not scheduled by the Department of Chemistry and you should contact the relevant department or the lecturer giving the course for details of your exams.

Not unless you have a very good reason (e.g. severe illness). Please see the Senior Tutor for advice.