What is an Exam Allowance?

An exam allowance is a remedy for a student who has been impacted by an unanticipated illness or grave cause which prevented them from completing their formal assessment(s) where the marks contribute to the student’s formal examination result.

This is a summary of the Exam Allowance process and the 2025-26 Exam Allowances Guidance which can be found here should be read in full before applying.

The exam allowances system is for all undergraduate and postgraduate students except those on the following professional/research courses that are not included: 

• Medical students and Veterinary Medical students during the last three clinical years of the course; 
• Bachelor of Divinity Degree, Doctor of Medicine Degree, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree, Ph.D. Degree (including by special regulations), Cert. PG study, Doctor of Business Degree, Doctor of Engineering Degree, Masters of Letters Degree (M.Litt and M.Sc.), M.Phil by Thesis (students on these courses can use the Examination Review Procedure to review their examination results where "serious illness or other grave cause’ has clearly impacted upon the examination).

Students on the Foundation Year Programme have different exam allowances available which can be found here. 

Criteria for granting exam allowances 

An exam allowance can only be granted where the illness or grave cause is:

• so serious that it prevented the student from:

  • attending the exam; or

  • completing a substantive part of the exam; or

  • having the decision-making capacity to determine they were not fit to sit the exam; or 

  • completing the assessment by the deadline and applying for an extension.

• unanticipated;

• entirely beyond the student’s control; 

• close in time to the assessment;  

• evidenced by contemporaneous medical evidence from an independent, appropriately qualified source; and

• accompanied by academic evidence that the student would have otherwise been expected to pass the exam or achieve a significantly higher mark than was received. 

• Where circumstances that are likely to impact your performance begin before the exam/assessment then different action will need to be taken:

  • Illness or grave cause impacts student's studies during the academic year - Intermission (apply before exam period begins)

  • Disability or condition requires reasonable adjustments to exams - Exam Access Adjustments (apply before division of Lent term)

  • Illness or grave cause impacts coursework - coursework extension (apply before submission deadline)

  • Student fails and has not reported illness or grave cause that impacted their capacity to decide to sit exams - retrospective intermission (apply within 14 days of fail result)

Exam allowances available to students

Tripos students

First and second years: 

→ get to progress to the next year if they would have otherwise failed; 

→ receive a statement on their academic transcript that confirms “these results were impacted by illness or grave cause”; 

→ where applicable, all second year marks are discounted from the Overall Degree Classification.

Final years (third and fourth years of integrated Masters:

→ 25% or less of assessments impacted - disregard and recalculate degree results; 

→ More than 25%:  

• sit reassessment in the Long Vacation/first half of Michaelmas Term to receive an Overall Degree Classification;
• sit reassessment with next year’s cohort, to receive new marks on the transcript and reclassification of the Part, ranking and Degree. 

Postgraduate students 

→ 25% or less of assessments impacted, if permitted by the Degree Committee, disregard and recalculate award results; 

→ More than 25%, or where the Degree Committee do not permit disregarding: 

• Sit reassessment within 3 months – may result in updated transcript, will enable Examiners to determine whether to give the academic award; 

• Sit alongside next year’s cohort, to receive new marks on a transcript and full results. 

Examples of Exam Allowances can be found here.

The Process

• Submit a Student Initiation Form found here to your Tutor and the Tutorial Office within 7 days of the exam/assessment (or the final exam within an exam period)

• If this deadline has passed, still email the form, but you will need to provide a valid and evidenced reason for why it is late.

• The college then has 6 weeks to submit the application and all accompanying evidence to the Exams Allowances Guidance Committee (EAMC). 

• Where applications are submitted after the 6 weeks a valid and evidenced reason for lateness must be included with the application. Applications received outside of this timeframe are highly unlikely to be accepted. 

Student statements  

• Students may wish to provide a brief statement outlining the impact of the illness or grave cause to be submitted with their application.

• Our Guidance on Writing Your Personal Statement for an Examination Allowance and the Template can assist you in writing your statement.

• If you would like your statement to be checked, contact us via our online form found here and one of our advisors will be happy to review and provide you with feedback. 

Outcomes

• Once the Committee has made a decision, an outcome letter will be sent to the College and the student via email normally be issued within ten working days.

• If you are dissatisfied with the decision in relation to the exam allowance application, a Review of Decisions of University Bodies can be submitted within 14 days of receiving the decision. Requests for review can only be made on set grounds:

• Procedural irregularities that occurred during the reconsideration which were material or potentially material to the decision being reached;

• The decision is unreasonable in that no reasonable person or body could have reached the same decision on the available evidence;

• The availability of new evidence, which materially impacts the decision and which, for valid reasons, could not have been submitted at an earlier stage.

• Our Guidance on the Review of Decisions of University Bodies Procedure can help you understand the process and build your application.

• If you are unsatisfied with the outcome of this review, and the reasons behind the decision, you can make a representation to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) within 12 months of the formal decision being issued.