2.8 Examination Failure
The number of students affected by the contents of this section is usually no more than one or two a year and is often zero. It is, however, necessary to make clear the procedures in the event of academic failure.
All undergraduates are required to sit an exam at the end of each year. These are usually Tripos or Prelim examinations. Where no such exam is set, or where a Director of Studies judges it more appropriate, a College exam will be set. In order to proceed with your studies at Selwyn the next year, you must achieve the minimum of a Third Class, i.e. to have performed to Honours standard. Failure is, therefore, defined as not being included in the class list for Honours in a classed exam, not being approved by the examiners in an unclassed Prelim, or obtaining a mark below Honours standard in any other sort of exam. Where the College enters a student for part of a Prelim but not for all papers, the marks on those papers sat will be the ones considered.
The University’s regulations governing the award of degrees do not permit resits.
Where failure is the demonstrable outcome of ill-health or other incapacitating circumstances, the University is ready to take this into account. In such cases a student’s Tutor will make a case to the University’s Access and Mitigation Committee, setting out the mitigating circumstances and requesting that the student be allowed to continue with their course. If the case is accepted, the College would usually, but not invariably, allow the student to continue. It is usual for the Examination Access and Mitigation Committee to impose some conditions before a student is allowed to return into residence.
If there are no mitigating circumstances, exam failure means that a student loses their right to continue with his or her course. In all such cases, the undergraduate has a right of appeal against the decision to send him or her out of residence. Such appeals are heard at a special meeting of senior members of the College Council in the Long Vacation following the result.
The Council has the right to permit any undergraduate to return into residence notwithstanding his or her failure, and to attach any conditions it feels fit to that decision (for example, by requiring a further College exam immediately before the Michaelmas Term next following, or by requiring that specific academic work be successfully undertaken during the Long Vacation).
An undergraduate making an appeal to the College Council has the right to appear in person, as well as to be represented by their Tutor. The undergraduate’s Director of Studies and any Fellow of the College by whom they have been taught may also be present. Before the meeting, the Senior Tutor shall produce a document providing the student’s supervision reports, precise examination marks and other relevant information, before concluding with a recommendation. The student (with the help of their Tutor or another Fellow if the student wishes) shall also produce a written case providing the Council with the grounds upon which the appeal is based. These documents shall be circulated to the Council and shared between the Senior Tutor and the student (through their Tutor) at least 24 hours before the Council meeting. At the meeting itself, members of Council shall have the opportunity to direct questions both to the Senior Tutor and other Fellows who are in attendance and to the undergraduate or their Tutor. The student (or their Tutor) and the Senior Tutor will then be given the opportunity to make brief concluding statements before they withdraw for the Council to deliberate and decide. They may recall the undergraduate and their Tutor and the Senior Tutor during the deliberations should clarification be required on any point. The decision of the appeal body is final.
The Council does not have the power to set aside the University’s Tripos regulations. If it decides that the student should be allowed to return into residence, but the latter is not, as far as the University is concerned, in standing to proceed to an honours degree in the subject in question, it becomes necessary either for the student’s Tutor to make a retrospective case to the Examination Access and Mitigation Committee of the University Council for the grant of an ‘Allowance’, or for the student to be allowed by the College Council to change to a subject for which he or she is in standing.