MA degree results

Award recommendations

Your degree will be awarded anonymously to avoid any possible bias. It is, therefore, important that if you have any extenuating circumstances such as serious illness which has affected your performance you report these in good time so that they can be considered before the final anonymous degree classification board meeting. Find out more on our documenting extenuating circumstances page.

To be awarded the degree of MA, students must normally complete a total of 180 credits including 120 credits of taught modules and the 60 credit Dissertation, achieving marks of 50 or better in each separate element.

Your degree classification will be determined by the outcome of two calculations:

  • your weighted average grade

  • the distribution of your weighted grades

These calculations are both based on the grades that you obtain in the modules contributing to your degree programme. The grades obtained in individual modules are weighted according to the credit value of each module i.e. grades for 30 credit modules are worth twice as much as 15 credit modules.

At the Exam Board's discretion you may be recommended the award of an MA degree with merit or distinction as follows:

Merit

To be eligible for the award of the MA with merit you must achieve a weighted mean grade of not less than 59.5 over all 180 credits taken and a mark of not less than 60 in at least 90 credits worth of modules.

Distinction

To be eligible for the award of the MA with distinction you must achieve a weighted mean grade of not less than 69.5 over all 180 credits taken and a mark of not less than 70 in at least 90 credits worth of modules.

Students who fail to successfully complete 180 credits are allowed one resubmission attempt per module, including the dissertation. Students who are not recommended for the award of a Masters degree may be eligible for the respective award of a Postgraduate Diploma or Certificate.

For more information see University regulations on failures, resubmission and degree awards.

Results

All classifications are considered by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Board. Once this process has taken place, you will be notified of your degree classification by the Student Administration Service. This will usually be by early December.

Your results are made available to you through the Gradintelligence system. You will receive an email from edocs@sheffield.ac.uk inviting you to activate your account (if needed) and access your transcript once it is available.

This transcript will be the formal verification of your results. The system allows you to share your transcript securely with third parties of your choice i.e. to support applications for jobs and/or further study.

More information about the Gradintelligence system

Changing the email associated with your account

Before your University computer account is closed, you’ll need to change the email associated with your Gradintelligence account to a non-University of Sheffield address. Gradintelligence will prompt you to do this when you complete your course.

Troubleshooting

If you received your BA transcript via Gradintelligence you should log in and check the email address associated with your account, as you will likely have already updated it to a personal address and that is where your transcript will be sent. If you can't log into your account see the Gradintelligence account recovery page - you will need to select the University that you received your previous transcript from.

For questions about any aspects of the Gradintelligence service or accessing your account, please contact Gradintelligence Customer Services in the first instance: customerservices@gradintel.com.