Coursework Penalties & Extenuating Circumstances

Lateness penalties for Undergraduate and Taught Masters essays:

There are very severe penalties for late submission of work, and as a result it is almost always better to submit incomplete work than take the penalty. The main penalties are that you lose 5 marks for submitting work one day late, a further 10 marks for submitting in the next six calendar days.A mark of zero will be recorded for coursework submitted more than seven calendar days. Providing the coursework is submitted before the end of the first week of term 3, but had not been submitted within seven days of the deadline for the submission of the coursework, it will be recorded as zero but the assessment would be considered to be complete.

Extenuating Circumstances

If there are good reasons, such as illness or family bereavement, why you will not be able to meet the deadline, or to produce work to your usual standard, you must fill out an extenuating circumstances form available here (word doc - save as to download):
 
If you feel you will be unable to meet the deadline for your essay please contact the Departmental Office, the Departmental Tutor (Lucy O’Brien for BA or Sebastian Gardner for MA) or the Chair of Exams (Jo Wolff). Your module teacher is not permitted to give you an extension.
 
Please note that computer theft or failure is not an acceptable reason for late submission. You are strongly encouraged to make use of an automatic back-up service, such as Dropbox, so that your work is always backed up.

Penalties for over-length coursework, including dissertations:

• Assessed work should not exceed the prescribed word count.
  
  
• Assessed work with a stated word count above the prescribed word count should not be accepted for submission (i.e. it will not be date-stamped or otherwise recorded as formally submitted), but immediately returned to the student with instructions to reduce the word length. The work may then be resubmitted but the original deadline for submission still applies and penalties for late submission will be applied.
  

• For work that exceeds the upper word limit by 10% or more, a mark of zero will be recorded.

• For work that exceeds the upper word limit by less than10% the mark will be reduced by ten percentage marks; but the penalised mark will not be reduced below the pass mark, assuming the work merited a pass.

Plagiarism

See UCL statement

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/current-students/guidelines/plagiarism

Reuse of material

Any paper submitted by you is presumed to be original work that has not previously been submitted for another course. You should therefore, as a rule, avoid writing on topics that you have written on previously. If you consider that there is good reason for you to revisit a topic, or to overlap with previously submitted work, then you must consult, and obtain prior written approval from the course tutor. If permission is granted, the onus will nevertheless remain on you to avoid mere duplication.
 

Back to Undergraduate Guide

Download MA Guide (PDF)