The Resubmission Statement

The Resubmission Statement – how a good one is your key to success on resubmission

The Resubmission statement is potentially one of the most useful documents that you will produce if you are resubmitting (see the Resubmission Guide to see if you have to complete this statement, normally you do unless resubmitting on a different topic or company). Unfortunately its purpose seems to be misunderstood: it is not just ‘another form to be filled in’ at the end prior to loading your files – in fact I would recommend that very first thing you do BEFORE you even begin to start preparing your resubmission is to spend some time on this. Believe me it will be time very well spent!

I believe the purpose of the Resubmission statement is to make you do some self-reflection on the reasons why you failed last time. By recognising your deficiencies in this way you should then be able to focus on what went wrong and how you can overcome the areas of weakness – and this is more likely to lead to a successful resubmission. See it as your personal ‘Action Plan to Pass the RAP’. So first of all please do not try to replicate what a friend or colleague wrote in their resubmission statement – otherwise you are missing out on a very valuable opportunity to be proactive about your own work, as to be effective the statement needs to be individual to you – there is no ‘model’ resubmission statement!

Here is the approach I would recommend:

Read through the marker feedback, it should detail not just the areas you failed but more specifically why you didn’t satisfy the assessment criteria for a pass grade

Concentrate on these areas or activities that were failed and why – by jotting down the points one by one on a ‘draft resubmission statement’.

Look at each of these in turn and consult the Assessment Criteria for a Pass in the latest Information Pack (currently Appendix 1). Now do some ‘gap analysis’ – you know what you did, the marker will have outlined what was ‘missing’ or wrong and the assessment criteria set out the minimum requirements.

Then it is self-reflection time (remember from your Skills & learning Statement how you were asked to do some self-evaluation about what you learned from producing the RAP and the mentor experience? Well this is just an extension of that – and in fact if you failed your SLS on Self-Reflection you might be able to impress the marker on your resubmission by mentioning how you used self-evaluation of what went wrong to help you with your Resubmission Statement and rectifying your work – as long of course, as you most importantly demonstrate it in your ACTUAL resubmission!)

So returning to the ‘gap analysis’ consider how you can achieve the requirements for at least a C grade and move from the fail to a pass grade. For example the feedback may have said in relation to Topic 8, that your evaluation consisted mainly of ratio calculations and statements of whether sales or profits etc. increased/decreased but not any real analysis. According to the assessment criteria ‘Little or no critical evaluation’ leads to failure, whereas ‘High level of critical thought shown in the analysis and a rigorous approach to the evaluation of information’ is required for an A grade and ’Strength shown in some areas of critical review of the information. Good evaluation of information’ would give a B. From this it is clear that in relation to Evaluation of Information and Analysis, a critical approach determines the grade- so this is the ‘gap’ you need to bridge to pass. So next you should think how you can introduce some critical evaluation into your work (….and a few key words in a search engine should point you in the right direction to some relevant type of student material on how to attempt a critical review and analysis approach).

A further example which demonstrates the sort of comments to make in the statement might be the following in relation to failure in the Referencing element of Information Gathering and Referencing,

Perhaps the feedback said something like:

“Your referencing was inconsistent: in many places it was missing completely and some references were hard to find in the Reference List because it did not comply with Harvard referencing.”

So this would mean that in order to pass on re-submission the referencing must be more systematic (by using the Harvard system for example or some other clear system that identifies what you have referenced and shows details of all the sources in the reference list) and be more consistent so that all statements of opinion, fact and the ideas of others in the RAP are supported by accurate references (to give it validity and to avoid potential plagiarism).

In addressing this, the first step would be to read all the guidance on referencing so that you understand what referencing entails and the next would be applying it to your work to show that the referencing issue has been resolved.

When all of this has been carried out then it would be appropriate to update your draft resubmission statement by re-iterating the marker/ moderator comments (above) and then saying how you overcame them.

So with our Information Gathering and Referencing example above

“I read the Resubmission Guide and all the Guidance I could find on referencing and as suggested I have made it systematic by using the Harvard system to deal with the problem that references could not be found in the list. I have gone through my whole report and ensured that I have supplied references as required for all of the statements that I have made as I now understand the importance of referencing to support my findings and to avoid any possibility of plagiarism”

So the Resubmission statement is a useful working checklist to help you make the best of your resubmission and get that all important C grade – in my opinion not something that OBU has introduced to punish you for failing last time! Use it well and you should get your BSc.

As that is probably the reason behind it, you can’t actually be failed on the Resubmission Statement itself (there are no assessment criteria attached to it) but a poor statement would probably indicate that not enough thought and application had gone into the resubmission itself and therefore the errors and omissions haven’t been addressed properly, so another failure could be the final outcome. So invest some time in your statement – it is the first step on resubmitting successfully. Good luck!

Trephena – Open Tuition OBU Forum Moderator

Visit also OBU Forums for expert advice from contributors who have had years of experience in helping students prepare for their RAP submission and in some cases contributors who themselves have gained their degree by going through the OBU RAP process.

The Resubmission Statement