How To Get a FIRST Class in a University Essay | Examiner Explains the Mark Scheme

everyone and welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is amina in today's video we are going to be tackling the dreaded topic of essay writing and what makes a good essay what is it that takes an essay from 50 to 60 to even 90 percent the kind of the key distinction is sometimes not that obvious and what i've done today is i've taken a look at a mark scheme i'll leave the link for the mark scheme down below but it's mark's team from imperial college london i'm gonna start from a

fail uh purely because i think it's important to understand what constitutes um a fail to know sort of what you shouldn't be doing so fail is anything under 40 and what it says here is that the answer presents a quarter to one third of the expected relevant material i.e it's a sketchy outline of a correct answer and your answer may be inaccurate irrelevant or not really answering the specific question so just be aware that when you are writing your answer to your essays always be on topic always be specific and always be clear now the

one key thing that i always do and i always recommend people to do when i'm proofreading their essays and if you do check out my proofreading at the pagedoctor.com frequently recommend is that students will write the question in the header what it means that you're constantly keeping in mind your question so by having the question in the header no matter what page you're on even if you on the fifth page of your essay the question is always in sight and when i started to do this it completely changed the way that i write because as

i'm writing i'm constantly looking at the question and i'm reminding myself of what it is that i'm actually trying to answer so when i do go off track it reminds me that actually that's a question that you're supposed to be answering the second thing is always having a plan so by having a plan before you write never write an essay before planning the essay it's very similar to the fail except it includes a half of the relevant material so for fails about a quarter so this is about half moving on to a 2 2 or

2 b and this is between 50 and 60 percent for a 2 2 you may have relevant information um but again you've got some irrelevant information your organization is lacking so that could mean that your structure isn't flowing um so again when you when you think about the way that an essay is written it should always be sort of top um the top should be as general as possible going into the more specific detail may also show that you lack a clear understanding and again this means that you may you might have introduced some concepts

but you haven't given enough detail about them you haven't shown that you have read the paper and have understood what it is that the discussion's about says coursework assignments that are too long poorly written all that show inappropriate and incorrect references are unlikely to be marked above 2b now this is the first point in which references are mentioned so before this before two two if you if your references aren't good you won't even you won't even get above a two two but in a two two you might have it says incorrect use of references so

you've used references but you might not have used the right references you might not have a use of right styles if you've been told to use harvard you haven't used it correctly um you may you may have missed some referencing as well so if there is any issue with your referencing you cannot get above a 2-2 in general so again i feel like referencing is a really important skill and that is included not only in the text but also at the end of the text within your bibliography and again with the page doctor we can

check that if you feel like you want us to check your references and to make sure that you have cited correctly then feel free to book a proofreading move on to a two one now two one and a first is sort of what you want to aim for at first more so but let's look at a two one first so it says here that answer gives a well-organized mainly accurate and well-written account of the relevant concepts and facts containing at least two-thirds of the expected relevant material moving on to a two one now a two

one and a first is sort of what you want to aim for at first more so but let's look at a two one first so it says here that answer gives a well organized mainly accurate and well-written account of the relevant concepts and facts containing at least two-thirds of the expected relevant material so even within a two-one you still don't have to have a hundred percent of relevant material but what you do need to have is good structure good organization good discussion and to show that you've actually thought about what it is that you're writing

and again you can't do this without a plan so if you haven't planned you really can't get above a third purely because organization becomes a really key aspect of what your examiner is looking for and as like i said as an examiner as someone who reads essays all the time i can tell straight away when someone has thought about their structure and when someone has um tried to kind of organize their work in in a more kind of cohesive manner it's very obvious straight away so do make sure you're planning and do make sure you're

thinking about each section what you're going to include what each part is going to contain and sort of what papers you're going to use to discuss and to reference um that discussion it also further states that you demonstrate comprehension and or application of the relevant concepts and lack significant errors of understanding so if you're mentioning a theory or concept or or anything there is there shouldn't really be significant errors um again within a two one you can you can have some error but there shouldn't be significant error and as it says demonstrates comprehension and or

application so this is um sort of starting to think about your critical discussion so you're not only taking this theory or taking this concept but you're also applying it and sort of putting it into context with your own discussion too and again think about referencing it says that there is correct use of references to attain a 2a or higher so like i said without good references you cannot even attain a 2-2 so for 2-1 it has to be it says here correct user references now let's move on to the first now this is what everyone's

looking and thinking and wanting to achieve so let's start off with sort of the lowest of a first that's going to be around 70 percent um 72 75 and that is what you you'd usually get if you do get a first unless your work is exceptional and that's when you go into the 80s or the 90s which is a lot rarer but even 70 percent is really really good so for around 75 it says that the answer gives an excellent account of virtually all of the expected relevant material so virtually all which means you have

included everything that's relevant to that specific question so that could include everything in the lecture notes every all the supplementary information and you've done extra reading even you've basically included everything that you should have included now again this ties back into that plan having a plan means that you won't miss out any information it also says that it shows excellent comprehension and application so one it said excellent uh comprehension or application whereas here it shows that you comprehend you understand and you also are able to apply it so that in itself is what gives you

a first so a lot of people what i find is they can comprehend they can understand the theories and the topic um but they don't necessarily apply it into their question now by what i mean by application is this is sort of the critical discussion side of things so it's where you might um take put it into context with your own question you might give your own opinion you might give a limitation or think about it in a slightly different way or in a more original way than what's already out there it carries on to

say in addition provides some analytical critical and or synthetic treatment of the information and or includes some relevant supplementary material now up until this point they your examiner expects you to have used the lecture notes um any extra reason they might have given you and that's sort of what they want you to base their essay on but to really aim for that top grade so to aim for the first you do need to do supplementary reading now this doesn't have to be anything crazy you don't have to you know swim through pubmed to find some

new resources but you can just find a couple of new points a couple of um sort of independent papers that you haven't been told about before or maybe even think about it from a slightly different angle um or think about a different method that was used or a different approach or different consideration and different context slightly something a bit different that excites the reader and reminds them that this is an original piece of writing think about your lecturer as someone who's going through i don't know a hundred essays and that are all the same they

want they get excited and they get intrigued when there's a slightly different discussion um or a point that's been made that they that makes them stop and think and you want to be that person that does that to your lecturer and to the reader so definitely think about what you're bringing that's new to the table and that is how you get those points move on to 80 to 85 percent it says that an answer gives an excellent account of virtually all of the relevant materials so excellent comprehension application and then it says provides consistently analytical

critical and or synthetic treatment of the information so before we're for 70 to 79 you have included some critical discussion but it might it might just be at a certain point so it might have only been in the conclusion or it might have only been sort of you know within one or two discussion points whereas to get between 80 to 85 90 there needs to be consistent analysis of the work of the points that you've been making and again i feel like it's kind of beyond the scope of this video to talk about exactly how

to do that and i think i'll do that in i might make another video about how to do that um in more detail and give you some examples but do think about sort of not just comprehending so not just taking the information and writing it down and this is like this is probably the hardest mark to achieve between 90 to 100 i'm very very i've probably seen one essay that's got between those grades it's very tough to get there um although anything above 17 is the first but obviously the higher percent you get um the

more your work balance is out later on but for 90 to 100 it says the answer is a masterful exposition of the subject and in fact a lot of mark schemes also say that it's publishable so it's to that kind of level where the work can be published there's command of the relevant concepts and facts what that means what the word command means is it shows that you are able to you have a strong discussion you have a strong understanding to be a commander it means that you are sort of the top of the ranks

it says that you've included considerable well-chosen supplementary material so again that we touched upon this earlier but it's not just a bit of extra material but you've there's consistency so you've included some additional material in the intro maybe in a few of the subheadings um in a few of the other discussion points and also in the conclusion there's consistent evidence that you've done a lot of wider reading and that is one of the key points that you want to kind of bear in mind when writing your essay when planning your essay summarize and again i'm

going to read off of the mark scheme from ucl the first you want to show detailed knowledge and understanding of the main concepts and theories and you show awareness of the limitations of this knowledge base so like i said you want to make sure that you're not making any mistakes that you've touched upon all the knowledge there is about that specific subject i just want to show a logical articular analysis and and you're also persuasive so again you make sure that you have given your judgment in a way where you're showing your knowledge base and

also you need to be convincing in your conclusion and your discussions you need to make sure that your argument is always supported by evidence and that is another key feature of a first when i edit work i always ask for the mark scheme and that is something that the page doctor does um all the time we ask for math schemes and a lot of the time students just don't understand them they can be very complicated and not really give you specific detail as to how exactly to achieve those grades i hope so hopefully this video

helped you break down a typical mark scheme um and to understand exactly what each of the different points and parts mean do let me know if there's anything that you didn't understand i can maybe help clarify in the comments down below and let me know what other videos you want to see from me and i'll see you guys in my next video bye