3. Part C Examination Papers

Students are assessed on the equivalent of 8 (this is the minimum number of units required), 9 or 10 units (2 of these units will include the dissertation). Further, you are required to offer at least 3 units which are assessed by written invigilated examination. 

Mathematics Department Units

Written Examinations

C1.1-C8.7
Each mathematics paper will examine one unit. Most mathematics units will be assessed by a closed book exam. These will consist of three questions, each worth 25 marks. You may submit answers to as many questions as you wish, but only the best two answers will count towards the final mark for the paper. 

In all papers the questions set should, as a whole, be fairly spread across the syllabus.

Questions will be broadly similar in style to previous Part C questions with an easy start examining material explicitly covered in the course, followed by a part which tests understanding. Each question will be set so that a sound student can produce a complete answer within 35- 40 minutes. 

Each question should be divided into two to four parts and an indication of the raw marks available for each part of each question should be given on the question paper.

C7.1
Please see the Physics Part C examination conventions on Canvas: https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/67877/pages/examination-matters?/module_item-id=73828.

Coursework
Dissertation

Dissertations are compulsory for Part C students and will have a weighting of two units.  The word limit for dissertations is 7,500 words, and there is an absolute page limit of 50 pages. 

USM marks will be assigned to dissertations with the same meaning as regards class boundaries as in the mathematics papers.  In arriving at these marks, the relative weights attached to content, mathematics and presentation will be 25%, 50% and 25%, respectively.  

Word Limit Penalties

Students will need to self-certify the word length of their project, and must submit their dissertation in both .pdf and .tex file formats. The department will use TeXcount to conduct word count checks on a randomly selected subset of submitted work and therefore would encourage students to use TeXcount to confirm their word count prior to submission. Guidance on how to count words in a latex documents can be found on the Maths Institute website: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/it/faqs/latex/word-count. 

There is an absolute page count limit of 50 pages. As stated above, the length of a typical dissertation is 25-30 pages so this page count should be considered an extreme and is likely only to be a matter of concern for a few dissertations (e.g. ones involving a lot of tables or diagrams). This page count includes all the dissertation content except program code.Further guidance on dissertations can be found in the dissertation guidance handbook: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/students/undergraduate-courses/teaching-and-learning/part-c-students/teaching-and-learning/dissertations.

The examiners will penalise overlong dissertations in line with the below penalty table.

Word Count Penalty
7501-8000
 1%
8001-8500 5%
8501-9000 10%
9001-9500 20%
9501-10000 30%
10001-10500 40%
10501+ 50%

Mini-projects C2.3, C2.6, C3.9, C4.7, C5.4 and C6.5

All have a weighting of one unit.  USM marks will be assigned to mini-projects with the same meaning as regards class boundaries as in the mathematics papers and with reference to the qualitative descriptor in Appendix I.

Statistics Department Units: SC1-SC2, SC4-SC11

Please see the Mathematics and Statistics Part C examination conventions at https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/bammath-mathematics-and-statistics-student-resources.

Computer Science Department Units

Please see the Mathematics and Computer Science Part C examination conventions at http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/teaching/examconventions/mcs.html.