Analyzing my university marks

I recently finished 4 years at the University of Southampton, studying MEng Computer Science. I kept a spreadsheet recording all my university marks and this post briefly looks into some of my numbers.

The weighting for my degree was 20% for 2nd year and 40% for 3rd and 4th year. My final weighted mark was 74.96% which comes out to a First Class Honours. Each year breaks down to the following:

• Year 1: 78.13%
• Year 2: 79.37%
• Year 3: 72.80%
• Year 4: 74.91%

Over those 4 years, I did 104 assignments and exams. Each year consisted of 8 modules so that comes out to an average of just over 3 methods of assessment.

I quickly graphed my mark percentages. The left-most results are the most recent because of how my spreadsheet is laid out.

Most of my marks are in the upper half and the majority above 70%. Only 2 assignments came out to a fail mark (they were super difficult maths tests). I got full marks in 14. My best module was Automated Code Generation at 92.80% and my worst was Cryptography at 61.64%.

I have always had a suspicion that I am worse at exams than assignments. To test this, I used =AVERAGEIF(B:B, "Exam", E:E) and =AVERAGEIF(B:B, "<>Exam", E:E). The former came out at 75.75% and the latter 81.42%. This calculation has a flaw by not taking the weighting into account but I think it confirms my theory.

My marks at college and subsequent marks at university awarded me the Zepler Scholarship 3 years in a row. I was also awarded the Netcraft Prize for being one of the top 10 students in 2nd year.

Some memorable modules for me include; Programming 1 where I got 98% in the exam after deleting something that one quote character would have fixed; redesigning an entire wiki in Computer Systems 2 to get bonus marks; and anything from the second semester of 3rd year, which was a tough period for me. Good times.