Results day delayed for many UCL students due to a technical problem

UCL students across several departments did not receive their results on August 6, purportedly due to the flooding of one of UCL’s servers.

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A significant number of the 32,000 students expecting to be sent their examination marks on Thursday, August 6 – the date of UCL’s publication of results – did not receive them that day. The delay has been attributed to a technical problem that prevented the Student Records team from sending out results to the student body in batches as promised. Although the exact number of students affected by this glitch is not yet known, it is clear that the problem spanned several departments at the university, including the English and Pharmacology departments among others.

One student who emailed their course administrator about the delay was told that some students did not receive their results on August 6 “due to a technical glitch,” while another was told that although “there does not [yet] appear to be any logical explanation for why some students have been affected,” the problem seemed to have been caused by a flood in one of UCL’s server rooms. This flood had also disrupted the functioning of Moodle and Portico in the previous week.

The Students’ Union reported that after speaking to Academic Services, they learned that the majority of results had been sent out by the morning of Friday, August 7. However, there were students still waiting after Friday – some as late as August 13, as an email from the Students’ Union notes. 

Academic Services admitted that the process of sending out results was taking much longer than expected, but that long delays seemed to be affecting only a small number of students rather than whole departments. The Students’ Union said that these individual cases were being dealt with by Student Records, who are working closely with different departments to send all results out as soon as possible.

Although some affected students took the matter lightly – posting all sorts of memes on the subject on social media – many others were stressed or upset by the delay. One student said she “checked [her] emails non-stop for two days” but only received her official marks 48 hours after results day, even after having contacted her department multiple times. She recalls how anxious the whole situation made her, concluding that the lack of organisation “was pretty appalling.”

Another student said most of his friends in the Pharmacology department were affected, either receiving only some of their marks or none at all until Saturday, and he expressed frustration at the fact that UCL “doesn’t even know who didn’t get their results.” 

And a final-year student – whose entry into a Masters programme was dependent on her final transcript – noted that UCL’s publication of results was already rather late compared to other London universities this year, and that the additional wait to know what she would be doing next year adversely affected her mental health.

The Student Records team has offered apologies for any inconveniences caused by the delays this year and reminded students that UCL is now able to send digital transcripts to third parties through its e-transcript service. Current students who need a transcript sent to an employer or university can get one for free and additional ones for £15 from the UCL online store.

This is not the first time UCL’s publication of results is delayed. Last year, results were expected to be published on July 2, but many students did not receive their marks until days later. 

In 2019, students took to UCLove to express their discontent at their delayed results. Like this year, the unifying thread in many of their complaints was to do with the anxiety that UCL’s tardy publication of results generated, with one student writing: “I wasn’t even very stressed about results, but the way UCL has handled this has made it a whole lot more stressful than it needed to be.” 

The difference this year is that the pandemic has added further uncertainty to both students’ results – as most students have taken alternative online assessments that they had never seen before – and to students’ futures, as many career opportunities that were previously available to them have been disrupted.

Students still waiting for their marks are advised to contact their department, while those wishing to speak to wellbeing advisers about their results or similar matters that may be worrying them can contact Student Support and Wellbeing confidentially through askUCL.