Hi,
I have recieved an offer from CASS to study for a masters programme. I already have an undergraduate degree (2:1) from my previous university and am currently studying for a diploma in Economics. My offer is conditional on me sucessfuly completing my diploma. The problem is today I had my first exam which I am almost 99% postive I failed (it was impossibly hard and many other students found this too so I really hope marks could be brought up but this is not sure).

My question is, if I do fail and not get my diploma would Cass still consider me or are Masters programmes usually very strict on these? I am stressed as it is and not sure what to do as I really want to go there ( I am still waiting for UCL to reply) Your help would be really appreciated?

Thanks

HI, you never know till the grades are out, so chin up! Secondly, the point of a conditional offer is that it is made solely on the condition that you will meet a certain condition (which in this case is your diploma?) To me, it seems self explanatory, or else why would they make a conditional offer in the first place, they would just have said "we strongly prefer you to have a diploma" or similar...

But again, if there are instance of this being waived (?) others may know and be able to offer brighter news...

yes thanks of course a conditional offer is a conditional offer but I was just wondering if there were any instances when this has been waived. Especially seeing that I have already got my undergraduate degree at 2:1 and that's what they are asking for at CASS. Also I know that sometime universities (LSE for example) do consider people who have failed to meet the offer (but this is only for undergraduate studies). Should I maybe contact CASS and ask them what their procedure is although I don't want to do this before I am sure I failed (which at this moment I think I definitely did not being pessimistic or anything just realistic seeing that I just answered 1/4 of the paper)
Thanks a lot for any insight on this 

It all depends. Unis give offers to try and fill their places, then they get results and have to juggle it all around to fill the places. If lots of people don't meet the offer then they might negotiate. If lots of people do then they might not. Basically they need to try and balance to get enough people on the course, not too many, and not too few. They will want to to fill their places. So it all depends on what everyone else does etc. I don't think if you contact them they will tell you any more. You just need to be patient and wait and see. Imo there's nothing more you can do.

Just a word of encouragement regarding your exam....don't stress too much about failing. We had a ridiculously hard statistics exam last year (on an MSc course) that we were all convinced we had failed. When the marks came out, we had obtained the usual range of scores you would expect from your average exam. I personally obtained a grade that was higher that the percentage of questions I had actually been able to answer, as did many other students. It just goes to show, if they set a stupidly unfair exam, they will have to adjust the marking scheme and inflate the results- it doesn't look very good for the lecturer, the course, or the uni if every student fails a particular module. Fingers crossed! KB

thanks so much for the encouragement, yes that's what someone else was telling me too that they might bunk up the marks if everyone fails, still worried though as i only answered 25% worth of the marks and haven't done as much work for other modules due to the said exam. crazily enough the exam for the same module at LSE was easier (I checked!), really made me wonder. Oh well still hoping for the best and will have to see closer to the time what happens. Should have never mentioned doing this diploma in the first place when I was applying I guess. ! thanks again