<p>Over this past year I have been reading math at Oxford as a junior from the U.S. Math here is a bit different, despite some courses having the same names. At the end of every term students here are given exams known as "collections" and the score from that will be used to calculate your overall grade. I studied hard during vacation and unfortunately i panicked on that day and my scores are not looking good. I am afraid I will end up with 2.ii on my transcript and I am not sure how U.S. graduate schools will interpret this. My tutors think I did really well in the tutorials and believed something went inexplicably wrong on the collection. I guess I am not well adapted to the "one-exam-is your grade" system. </p>
<p>Do you think graduate schools will understand that I challenged myself and am still a worthy applicant or will they instead view it as a lack of understanding in the material? </p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience dealing with this issue? I am really concerned that everything I worked so hard for in the past few years to get into a strong program will be worthless just because I chose to come study abroad and learn more while my friends stayed home and got higher grades a lot easier than I did. </p>
<p>You should find out how your college/university will treat your grades from Oxford. Will those grades go into calculating your GPA? At most universities the practice is to count the credits from study abroad toward the credits required for graduation, but not include those grades when calculating your GPA. The grades will probably appear on your transcript and you may have to send a transcript from Oxford when you are applying to grad school. That being said–if you already have a high GPA and get a strong GRE score, the Oxford grades may not create a problem. I’d talk to your advisor when you get back to the states and ask him about it. Good luck!</p>
<p>It will not count towards my GPA. However, the grad schools I want to attend all want Oxford grades. The issue is that I took most of the core, difficult major courses in Oxford which I believe a grad admissions panel would expect an ideal applicant to do well in. Is there anything I can do here at Oxford? </p>
<p>Would a letter of recommendation from the tutors help? Especially if they’re big names in your field.</p>
<p>For the future: If you do generally struggle with everything resting on a final exam, can you work on that, do you think? If you’re planning on a PhD you’ll have comprehensive exams to pass before you get to the dissertation.</p>
<p>Maybe take this as a sign that grad school is not for you? A 2.ii is pretty weak.</p>
<p>@keepittoyourself Your thoughts on his/her situation are quite ironic given your name. </p>