How to deal with a bad mark on your Master’s degree (and use it for your future success)

Introduction

If you’ve received an assessment mark that is much lower than you’d expected, don’t let this knock you off course, or damage your self-esteem. In other words, do not start doubting whether you can do this. Why? Because you CAN DO THIS!

As someone who has helped many hundreds of Master’s students succeed, I’ve seen this situation with many students before. In this short post I share with you the advice I give to Master’s students in this situation so that they know what to do in order to bounce back stronger than ever.

Questions also addressed in this article

• What does it mean if I receive a bad mark on a Master’s degree assessment? 

• What should I do if I get a bad grade on a Master’s degree? 

• Who can I talk to about my bad mark on Master’s degree? 

What to do if you receive a bad mark

1. Do not lose faith in yourself

Breathe through the feelings of disappointment. Recognise that you have the power to change your fortunes. Do not lose faith in yourself. Remember that when you were accepted onto your programme, academic professionals judged you as having the academic ability to succeed at Master’s level.

2. Now look beyond the mark to the feedback

Too many students only focus on the mark, but the feedback is designed to tell you precisely how to improve your work. What have your tutors said about what you did well, and what you could do better? Look at the specific comments around your knowledge of the topic, *and* the presentation, shape and format of your work. Both are crucial. Also make sure you look at cohort wide (to your module/year) feedback and feedforward.

3. Consider how to implement that feedback

Think about how you could put all that feedback into practice on the same piece of work – what would you change? This reflection will help you improve your future work – including the Master’s dissertation stage. It doesn’t have to consume a lot of your time – but whatever time you put into this will be a huge investment in yourself.

The most successful people in life never regard themselves as a ‘finished’ product and instead, they commit to continual improvement. This includes a keen willingness to learn from their mistakes.  Successful people don’t just ignore mistakes. They revisit a mistake and reflect upon it in order to understand what they need to do next time to make things better. In this respect, mistakes are opportunities for future success. Even making tiny adjustments can deliver a big payoff in the end.

4. Return to marker if necessary

Feedback unclear? Not sure what you need to do in the future? If these things aren’t addressed in your personal feedback and the cohort feedback, then you can go to talk to your module tutor (the person who is responsible for marking the work) for a meeting during their office hours to chat this through. But it is *crucial* that you read their feedback first!

If you have received disappointing marks on more than one assessment, it might also be a good idea to speak to an academic advisor from your school. This might be an ‘assigned tutor’ or ‘personal tutor’. Make an appointment to see them and take along examples of your work to explore how to level up your work across your programme as a whole.

Conclusion

The most successful people in life never regard themselves as a ‘finished’ product and instead, they commit to continual improvement. This includes a keen willingness to learn from their mistakes. 

It’s natural to feel disappointed when receiving a bad mark or a disappointing mark on a Master’s assessment. But it’s worth pushing past that feeling as quickly as possible and to see the mark for what it is – a clear signal that we need to look again at what we did, and to return to the feedback that tells us how we can improve. If you can do that, in my book, you’re a superstar student – and the very kind of person I admire the most.

In my experience as a university professor, the students that most impress me are the ones that take the feedback on their work really seriously. As a result they are able to identify ways of improving their technique that could make the difference between an entire classification (e.g. from a fail grade to a pass grade, or pass grade to merit, or even a merit to a distinction). Not only does that reflective work benefit them for the next assessment, but for all future assessments, including the final dissertation. These students realise, just as many of the top business CEOs will have realised, that getting things wrong – making mistakes – can be a very powerful part of the process of learning how to get things right.

So, as hard as it can be to receive a mark that sits below your expectations, focus on taking the most productive steps that can help you achieve – and maybe even exceed – your expectations at Master’s level!