“Come on, let’s all come out with the worst madness that the university administration has ever done to us… Send to all the students of the PACES class that they have been admitted to the 2nd year of medicine”
Under this video published a few days ago on TikTok by Iseult, a medical student, comments are pouring in. An avalanche that did not surprise the young woman.
The anecdote she tells is four years old, but since then, she has accumulated others. “For example, I received a message from a student who got her first-year results, she was admitted, then after two days, they sent her a message to warn her that they had made a mistake.”
Notes on copies
Grades and copies are a major concern for students, since they determine, in particular, the passage from one year to the next. All the more reason to be meticulous about corrections. Sometimes they come up against the wall of the administration and teachers.
“Getting 0/20 on a multiple choice test because they had lost my copy,” says Tahriyo, who then asked to see his prose. He adds: “It was impossible to show me my copy. They said they were going to re-mark it: I got 0.5/20. The worst thing was that there were 20 questions worth 1 point. You couldn’t get half a point.” Anaïs was able to see her copy marked 4 on a midterm. A good initiative because her mark, after looking at her copy, was actually 14.
When a grade seems surprising, it is better to ask why. At the end of June, Emma discovered that she had gotten a 9.2 in her second semester with an average of 1.9 in English. “I was shocked when I found out my average, because I usually get grades that are over 16/20 in English. I am at level C1, which seemed strange to me, even that can happen,” the young woman in the Literature stream at the Sorbonne tells us. She contacts the professor straight away.
She clarified: “I wanted to be sure that it was not a mistake, I was present for two assessments except the last one for personal reasons.” Her teacher replied that she had two absences, so 0 and a 9.5 – which still does not make 1.9 and that she was not present for the semester.
A bit much for the young woman: “It was very surprising, because I was present the whole semester, despite an error in my registration…” She then contacted the advisor of her degree, who sorted everything out. “My average in English went from 1.9 to 12.75, which makes a very big difference… If a student finds his grades suspect, do not hesitate to send an email to ask for his grades! Do not hesitate, the administration will not check with the TD instructor if the grades are correct by themselves, it is up to us to make this effort, which is not normal but that is another subject…”
Today Emma dropped out of her year, even though English, a minor, didn’t have a big impact on her final average. In some cases, the consequence is more unfortunate. Clémence had to repeat certain subjects because the university didn’t validate her “9.999 semester”. Émilie had to go to catch-up for this reason in L1.
Justified absences for which the supporting documentation is not sufficient
Other times, it concerns student absences, for which the supporting document is not sufficient or does not work. An example? “Not withdrawing my absence from a midterm, while I was burying my father and had provided all the supporting documents,” notes Audrey under Iseult’s video. “My grandmother was dying, 5 hours away,” explains Justine: “I left at noon to say goodbye to her on time and the secretary told me by email that since the death certificate is dated 3:30 p.m., it did not justify my absence.”
Sometimes, it’s the degree of kinship that isn’t enough. This is the case of Crapule, who lost his great-grandmother: “I went to the funeral. So I missed a day, I explained why, they answered me “it’s not a close enough degree of family to justify an absence.”
But grades and absences are not the only failures of the administration. “Instead of the midterm subjects of a Sciences Po competition, we had the corrections,” comments Tessa who retook the exam two days later. More serious, although temporary for Estelle: “Kicking me out in the middle of my year because my namesake who was in my class had asked to drop out of college!”
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