Your results in both examinations in the Summer Term are considered by the examiners at the end of the Summer Term, and candidates who do not pass on average have to resit those papers in which they failed. If you do not pass the resit examination at the end of August, your course will be terminated, but in practice most students either pass first time or pass the resit. Arrangements in the second year are similar, except that this time performance at the start of the Spring Term is taken account of equally with performance in the other examinations, and that if a second year student fails modules worth two thirds or more of their total credits in mathematics, the Board reserves the right to refuse an automatic resit. At the end of the second year, a final decision is taken as to whether you will take a three year degree or be allowed to proceed to a four year degree if you so wish. In the third year there are examinations at the start of the Spring Term and at the end of the Summer Term, and in the fourth year there are examinations at the end of the Summer Term.
Most students also have to write an assessed project.
At the end of your course, after three or four years, your performance in all units, including the project where appropriate, carries a weight proportional to the number of credits involved, except for the fact that courses taken in the first term of the first year and examined at the start of the Spring Term of that year carry no weight. Because of this it is most important that you should write the correct examination number on your scripts. The overall results of our students compare favourably with those at many other universities. Undoubtedly this is partly because we get good students in the first place, but we like to think that it is partly due to an interest in and enthusiasm for the subject engendered by the teaching in the department. A joint course student who, for example, takes 240 credits in Mathematics and 120 in, say, Economics, is assigned a mark in Mathematics on the basis of the Mathematics modules which count towards assessment and similarly is assigned a mark in Economics.