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Please do not beat yourself up Nyasha . I have been involved with the RAP one way or another since 2003. In that time I have seen it become harder and harder to pass. I have also seen students get Cs when they deserved higher grades and conversely been surprised when some work gets an A when I thought it was more aligned to a B and sadly also fails which I felt were unmerited. There is no simple answer…
Sometimes if you are unlucky , you get a marker who seems to be harder than many others. (The marking should be consistent but there will always be some variations in opinions). However the RAP is an academic piece of work and requires different skills from exams, success in one does not necessarily correlate with the other. I recall a few years ago a student who had been a regional prize winner being shocked when she failed and consequently reached out tto me. The marker felt the models she used were inappropriate and criticised a few other points. I am pleased to say after making amendments in accordance with the feedback she passed the RAP when she resubmitted.
So the questions remain are you to ‘blame’? Probably not. Is your mentor to blame ? Probably not. Is the system to blame? The jury is out….
Report them to Oxford Brookes as it is the mentor’s duty to hold 3 meetings with students and hold the presentation, and if they have breached this then they should be delisted as a mentor.
If you have had the other meetings I could hear your presentation. See if you can Message me via my absolute mentoring Facebook page today. I am still on the mentoring list but not doing much mentoring going forward but am prepared to heLp.
I am pleased to announce that the P47 Matthew Sykes Memorial prize for the best RAP submitted worldwide was once again awarded to a student mentored by absolute mentoring. This is the third time one of our students has been awarded this accolade
Well done on passing the report, which is the most time consuming and difficult part of the RAP usually.
I don’t think that there are any real grounds for an appeal since although you are disappointed with the result, from the feedback I recognise a few common mistakes that students make with these elements which mean that the assessment criteria were likely to be unmet.
With the SLS there is often a tendency for students to describe what went on whereas the emphasis should be on considering the impact of what you did. My tip for Q1 is to look back and as the marker says, consider strengths and weaknesses, transferable skills plus any new skills acquired and any lessons learned. Q2 on the other hand projects forwards to consider opportunities and how your future may be affected.
With the Presentation slides they need to communicate effectively which means they need to be clear but not overladen with words. The ‘audience needs sufficient information and interesting slides (to hold their attention). Never make the audience have to read too much, instead use visuals graphs and charts where appropriate (interspace them i.e. don’t stack a load of graphs together) . You can usually distil info down into key points and bite-size bits and remember, you may not be able to include absolutely everything in your report into a 15 min presentation.
No , it is unfortunate for you in your particular circumstances but that does not render it unfair. Administratively , it costs the University the same to process a first time submission, a resubmission that has failed with a lot of things wrong or a resubmission that only involves an SLS. Your argument would be like saying that an airline passenger who is only a quarter of the weight of an obese passenger should only pay a quarter of the fare when the piloting , crewing and admin costs like landing fees are the same per passenger (only potentially would the fuel costs be a bit less for the lighter passenger). Life is like that and sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
As a former marker I know it takes more time to mark a fail than a pass (because you have to provide feedback). So the whole thing averages out overall, so a quick win on a resubmitted SLS makes up for the failed one you may have spent nearly 2 hours on. There is no guarantee anyway that a resubmitted SLS will pass so potentially the marker might have to provide feedback again.
If you want your work marked you pay the same marking fee as everyone else. No one is forcing you to resubmit, so if you don’t like the system, then don’t.
To put your mind at rest I suggest that you contact them giving all the details and screenshots etc
PS even those who heard that they had passed in September don’t know when their ceremony will be but I can tell you that P 47 students as their results do not come out until 20 March are very unlikely to be included in any ceremony as early as June 2024. This is because for admin purposes attendance numbers need to be confirmed a couple of months before and you won’t have had your invitation in time. If there is an ACCA ceremony in September 2024 those who pass in P47 will be invited to that – otherwise you are looking at 2025
Your ceremony will be during ONE of those periods. OBU has not sorted out the fine detail of when each actual UK course ceremony will be yet so you will have to wait until they do. Don’t expect this for a month or two.
No as the resubmission statement is not part of the assessment criteria. The purpose of the statement is to make students read the marker feedback and identify where they went wrong and then show how they have made good the deficiencies. I you haven’t dealt with the deficiences then you could be failed but not for omitting the statement itself.
Probably it depends which you have chosen as it is better to have 6 relevant ratios with a good strpread rather than 10 inappropriate ones or ratios that are too similar [i.e. if you have ROCE, ROA and ROE they are very similar as is the current ratio and the quick ratio]. Normally a couple of ratios relevant to revenue, profit and margins, the current ratio [or debtor/ creditor days] and inventory turnover [if it is a manufacturer], gearing and a couple of investor ratios would be appropriate as they cover profitability, liquidity, liabilities and investor positions
The Info Pack and assessment criteria suggest 2. However if ratio analysis is relevant to your topic and you have used that, it too will count as a model but don’t forget to appraise this in the earlier part of your report
By publicly available information they mean anything that is in the public domain whether free or through subscription. This distinguishes this information from confidential company info only available internally if you work for the company or have a direct relationship with it.
Unfortunately 6,500 words implies that there would likely be inadequate research and not enough quality evaluation for a pass. A few years ago Brookes looked at low word count reports and found there was a correlation between the number of words and failure rates.
I would suggest that you read the section in the Information Pack and what evaluation entails and use the link to access the article by the University of Plymouth on critical thinking and then go through your report and add this type of analysis and evaluation. By doing this you will then stand a better chance of passing.
With my own students for example I recommend that the Analysis, Evaluaton and Conclusions section alone should be a minimum of 5,200 words without any padding. The rest of the report takes up the remainder of the words – so at least another 2,000 words and then most of them and run over struggle to keep within the word count.
No, there would have been some indication of plagiarism or matching with other student work. The absence of a certificate of authenticity on its own will not lead to the result being withheld
You need to justify the use of any comparator so consider why you think the non-electric vehicle company is appropriate. As for failing – if you are able to justify it appropriately then this should not be an issue.
Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it now. If only affects the odd one or two references then you may be ok.
If you consult the Information Pack you will see that in most instances you need to include recent data from the LAST 3 years. Older data may also be included if particularly relevant and its specific use justified, but you must show recent information as well and just using info that is more than 3 years old will likely result in a fail.
It depends what you mean by ‘recognised’? It should be treated as a standard UK Bachelors Degree in most instances. Universities outside the UK set their own requirements in respect of accepting students on Masters courses and therefore you would need to make enquiries specific to that particular institution.
The OBU BSc. (provided you get at least a 2.1 Honours classification) and your ACCA qualification together should certainly be adequate to gain entrance on a UK Masters course. The USA may have different criteria but I would expect most European countries despite Brexit to accept the OBU degree and ACCA for higher degree courses.
OBU will give you a reduced price on their MBA Global course if you already hold a degree from them. This Masters course is mostly conducted online with a few short residential module workshops in Oxford.
Nothing. It just means that you will not have benefitted from the University’s policy of maintaining anonymity in marking
Not necessarily – The advice above was about Annual Reports. Please consult your mentor about any final details relevant to your particular company
Well done on choosing Topic 13, which is a very interesting topic.
There has to have been some ‘event’ in the last 3 years: this might in addition be as a result of fines, a court trial or an investigation that may be connected to something that happened prior to that. There may or may not be, a connection (but usually you can attribute multiple failures) to weak governance and poor ethical behaviour by the board.
The important thing is to ‘evaluate’ when doing your analysis: this goes much further than just telling the reader what had happened – it is about considering the implications of what has happened and the broader consequences / significance of what has happened
My advice – get started asap as most students underestimate the amount of time required and to do a decent report that stands a good chance of passing is a 3 month task minimum and realistically probably a bit longer….
There is a simple explanation for F1-3 entry I believe however, how you explain it to the ANU may not be quite so straightforward….
The BSc Applied Accounting is based on 2 elements: successfully passing papers F4-9 and the getiting a minimum C grade for the RAP. Therefore in showing how your degree is made up, F1-3 have no input, although of course you need to pass these [or have an exemption from them] for your ACCA qualification.
This presents an interesting situation because the F1-3 element is already ‘mopped up’ by the ACCA qualification and as a general rule you cannot be given credit for the same qualification twice, but although F4-9 in effect forms part of your degree, technically F1-3 [or the exemptions that led to them] + your Professional Level exams are outside of this.
This makes it all rather complicated as your application is based on your Brookes 1st class honours degree and although the ACCA qualification forms part of this whether ANU will give additional credit for the elements outside of this comes down to each University’s own course and entry requirements. Finally it is worth noting that although either the ACCA qualication or the BSc. will be given the normal credit a University lays down for that particular qualification, when combined in the same application they are unlikely to be given the same combined amount of credit that they get each get individually i.e. if each is 60 credits you will not get 60 x2 but a lower figure.
I hope that makes sense.
Unfortunately I do not mentor for Topics 4, 5 & 8 so I am not best placed to answer queries on these topics.
However the usual thing is to justify your choice of a comparator and consider any limitations in your choice where you appraise the sources and models so state your case there for having selected the comparator you have and rejected the others.
