Hello,
I finished my degree in 2005 and got first class honours. However, I went on to do a Masters degree two years later and received quite a bad mark - 57%. I've always been a good student, and was on track to get a 2.1 or a 1st until I submitted a thesis which received 45%. I can't really explain why, but it's a combination of disliking the city I lived in, being a little bit depressed and isolated, disliking my thesis supervisor, and choosing a topic which I belatedly realized bored me to death.

After spending a couple of years travelling, teaching English etc, I've finally decided I want to enter an area which generally requires a postgrad qualification. However, I'm concerned that the admissions board will see my bad mark and assume I'm not cut out for postgraduate study, which I firmly believe to be untrue. The course I want to do is quite competitive.

I have two questions:
1.Do you think that this bad Masters mark will doom my chances of getting into this course?
2.If I were to simply leave it off my application, would the university be able to find this out, considering that I did it at a different uni to my undergraduate degree and there's nothing else in my application to say I ever attended that university? Is there a general national database or whatever of students listing all courses done? I could simply say I was travelling for the year.

Thank you.