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Law firms urged to give special consideration to Nottingham students

As one of the student representatives responsible for raising the issue of first year grades at Nottingham to lecturers at the time I can add the following: 1. The letter is nothing to do with students who graduate with a 2:2 overall, it is to clarify the marking structure Nottingham adopts during first year (generally thought to be very strict and justified by the school who want to enforce high standards from the very start of the degree programme). Law students applying for vacation schemes have only their first year grades to add to the form and therefore it is vital that a student applying with 58 from their first year is not deemed a ‘bad’ applicant and rejected as a result of that when, generally, 58 from first year is well above average at Nottingham and, given historic data, it is highly probable that student will graduate with a 2:1 or above at the end of the three year programme. 2. The issue of first year grades at Nottingham was raised with me many times over the course of my two year involvement with graduate recruiters who target Nottingham and was NOT raised by students ‘complaining’ that they only got a 2:2 in first year. 3. Various recruiters advised me that other universities they target had written letters clarifying the marking scheme for first year exams. Every university obviously has their individual policy but the broad idea often being that, generally, high 2:2 grades were to be applauded rather than to be seen as evidence of a student who hadn’t applied themselves in first year. As a result of the concerns of recruiters at the time I raised the issue with the School of Law and they were appreciative of the issue and took time out to clarify the situation to firms to ensure second year law students at Nottingham were not disadvantaged when applying for vacation schemes, my argument being that, given the action of other universities in clarifying first year marking of law papers, they would have been had the school taken no action.

5-Dec-2012

2:30 pm