Assessments and exams

Formative Coursework: There is no formal process for requesting an extension to a formative assessment deadline. If you feel that you need an extension for a piece of formative coursework, please speak to your class teacher.

Assessed Coursework: If something happens very close to the assessment deadline that will make it impossible for you to submit your work on time, you can apply for an extension. There are specific processes you have to follow, evidence you must provide, and criteria you must meet.

Who do I contact to arrange an extension?

All summative extension requests should be completed via the following online forms:

• Undergraduate Courses summative extension request form
• Postgraduate Courses summative extension request form 

You will need to upload your evidence at the time of completing the form. Please see LSE Standards of Evidence document for information on the various forms of acceptable evidence.

Should you have any queries:

Undergraduate students should contact IR.BSc@lse.ac.uk

Postgraduate students should contact IR.MSc@lse.ac.uk

Programme Coordinators are able to advise you on the requirements for making an extension request and provide guidance on submitting the extension request form.

Course Convenors, class teachers, GTAs and Academic Mentors (AM) are not permitted to give Extensions.

We do encourage you to speak to your Academic Mentor about extensions, but this is at your own discretion.

How long can an extension be?

An extension request can be made for 1-10 calendar days or for up to 50% of the assessment length for online assessments. 

You can normally only apply for extensions up to a maximum of 7 days in advance of the deadline (i.e. in the last week before you submit).

What if I have an existing My Adjustment (MA)?

If you have an MA recommending an extension for assessments, you will still be required to submit an Extension Request form. If the MA explicitly refers to a need for extra time or extensions for assessed work, it will be taken as sufficient evidence for the request to be made. You should submit the request before the submission date for the assessment.

If you have an MA that does not include any recommendation for extensions on assessments, you must submit an Extension Request form and state the number of extra working days you require before the submission date. You must provide evidence as required that complies with the standards set in the LSE Standards of Evidence table. It is important to note that MAs do not always disclose your condition to the Department. Please ensure you provide an explanation of the impact your MAs have on your ability to submit your work by the standard deadline so the impact can be given due consideration. 

What happens once I have submitted my request?

Once you have submitted an Extension Request form via email you should receive a response within 2 working days.

Programme Coordinators are responsible for communicating with you regarding the outcome and terms of your extension request and informing the examiners if necessary.

What happens if I miss my extended deadline?

If you do not submit your assessed coursework work by the agreed extended submission deadline, late submission penalties will apply. For details, please see Penalties for Late Submission policy below.

Where can I find out more?

For more information on the School’s extension policy please see LSE Extension Policy.

Students have to sit their assessments in the same academic year in which they received their tuition. However, you might, under certain circumstances, be allowed to postpone one or more assessments to the next appropriate assessment opportunity. This process is called deferral.

If you experience circumstances which are sudden, unforeseen, outside of your control and proximate to an assessment, you should first seek an extension (see above). If you require more time to submit the work than an extension would normally allow, or the assessment in question has a static deadline e.g. an exam or take home assessment, you may apply for a deferral.

If you feel that you may need to apply for a deferral, familiarise yourself with the School’s comprehensive webpage: Deferral guidance. We also advise you to make your Academic Mentor aware of the situation. 

It’s important to be aware that the School operates a ‘fit to sit’ policy. By submitting your assessment regardless of whether it is coursework, participation in a class presentation or sitting an exam, LSE considers that you have declared yourself fit enough to do so.

If you have experienced disruption to your studies (illness, injury or personal difficulties, for example) you must think carefully about whether you should attempt the assessment or whether you should consider requesting an extension or deferring the assessment (see above). Requests for an extension or deferral must be made in advance of the assessment deadline.

If you do decide to sit your assessment but later feel that your performance may have been affected by disruption (illness, injury or personal difficulties, for example) you can submit Exceptional Circumstances. You are advised to submit Exceptional Circumstances if you feel that something beyond your control has impacted your academic ability in the lead up to or during the assessment period and thus prevented you from performing at your full potential.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a serious offence in academic work. All assessed essays will be checked against specialist plagiarism software. Work containing plagiarism may result in severe penalties.

The work you submit for assessment must be your own. If you attempt to pass off the work of others as your own, whether deliberately or not, you are committing plagiarism. Drawing on the work of others without appropriate referencing includes, but is not limited to:

• direct use of other’s formulations
• paraphrasing of their formulations
• use of other authors’ quotes from, and references to, third party sources

The work of others includes:

• text and illustrations from books, newspapers, journals, essays, reports and the Internet

Any quotation from the published or unpublished works of other persons, including other candidates, must be clearly identified as such. Quotes must be placed inside quotation marks and a full reference to sources must be provided in proper form. A series of short quotations from several different sources, if not clearly identified as such, constitutes plagiarism just as much as a single unacknowledged long quotation from a single source. All paraphrased material must also be clearly and properly acknowledged. All concepts, theories and ideas taken from your readings and other forms of learning must be properly attributed to the author(s).

If you are found to have committed an assessment offence (such as plagiarism or exam misconduct) this can result in major penalties being applied to your assessment, failure, and in extreme cases expulsion from the School.

Read the Regulations on Assessment Offiences: Plagiarism

Self- Plagiarism

You should also be aware that a piece of work may only be submitted for assessment once (either to LSE or elsewhere). Submitting the same piece of work twice (regardless of which institution you submit it to) will be regarded as an offence of ‘self-plagiarism’ and will also be treated in the same way as plagiarism.

Editorial Help

Any written work you produce (for classes, seminars, essays, examination scripts, and dissertations) must be solely your own. You must not employ a ‘ghost writer’ to write parts or all of the work, whether in draft or as a final version, on your behalf. For further information and the School’s Statement on Editorial Help, see the link below. Any breach of the Statement will be treated in the same way as plagiarism.

Read the Statement on Editorial Help for Students' Written Work

If you are unsure about the academic referencing conventions used by the Department you should seek guidance from class/seminar teachers, from the Department webpages, Moodle platforms for individual courses, student handbooks, your Academic Mentor, and/or LSE LIFE or the Library as soon as possible.

Ways to avoid Plagiarism

The golden rule for avoiding plagiarism is to ensure that examiners can be in no doubt as to which parts of your work are your own original formulations and which are the rightful property of someone else. When presenting the views and work of others, include in the text an acknowledgement of the source of the material e.g. ‘...as Waltz (1979) has shown...’ and give the full details of the work referenced in your bibliography.

If you wish to use references to third party sources you have found in a text, include a reference e.g. States ‘do not willingly place themselves in situations of increased dependence…considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest’ (Waltz, 1979, cited in Moravcsik, 1993, p. 129) and full bibliographical details of each work.

If you quote text verbatim, place the sentence in inverted commas and give the appropriate reference e.g. 'it is not possible to understand world politics simply by looking inside of states’ (Waltz, 1979, p 65) and give the full details in your bibliography. If you wish to set out the work of another author at length so that you can produce a counter-argument, set the quoted text apart from your own text (e.g. by indenting a paragraph) and identify it by using inverted commas and adding a reference as above.

For further guidance on how to avoid plagiarism and how to reference correctly see e.g. the book by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, Cite them right: the essential guide to referencing and plagiarism (Pear Tree Books, 2005); LSE Life and the Library who offer a wide range of workshops on referencing.

The dissertation is a 10,000 word long piece of independent work that makes a contribution to ongoing debates in your field of study. Within the dissertation, students apply the knowledge they have acquired in their taught courses to the investigation of a particular problem or question in depth. The dissertation is not usually based on primary fieldwork or archival research. It may draw on either primary or secondary source material.

The IR MSc Programme Information Moodle page has lots of important information, including the dissertation notes and guidelines.

Check them out here (Moodle log-on required)

Every piece of assessed work has a clear deadline. The submission deadlines are to be taken seriously, since significant penalties will be applied in the case of late submissions.

If you have an assessment and you don’t feel that you can meet the deadline, make sure you talk to the Department as there are some options you can explore, depending on the circumstances. These include applying for a deferral or an extension. If you don’t successfully apply for either of these, and you submit your work late, the penalties will be as follows:

• Five marks will be deducted for an essay submitted within 24 hours of the deadline
• A further five marks will be deducted for each subsequent 24 hour period (calendar days) until the essay is submitted.
• Essays more than five days late will not be accepted. These penalties apply automatically after the deadline time for submission on the submission date.

The Department of International Relations has a policy of deducting marks if you submit work that is over the word limit, so please make sure you take note of the word limit (available on Moodle), and what is and isn’t included in the word count.

What’s included in the word limit?

The word limit includes footnotes (including references in footnotes resulting from Chicago-style referencing) and/or endnotes, words (not numbers) in tables and graphs, in-text references, and appendices.  An abstract is not required but if you choose to include one it will be included in the word count.

The word limit excludes cover page, bibliography, title and contents page, page numbers, and, where relevant, a list of acronyms.

How many marks will be deducted?

Here are some examples of the penalties in the context of various word limits:

In the case of a 2,000 word essay, 5 marks will be deducted from the essay mark if the word count is between 2,001 - 2100; in the case of a 3,000 word essay, 5 marks will be deducted from the essay mark if the word count is between 3,001 - 3,150; in the case of a 4,000 word essay, 5 marks will be deducted from the essay mark if the word count is between 4,001 - 4,200 words and in the case of a 5,000 word essay a 5 mark penalty will be applied if the word count is between 5,001 - 5,250 words.

How can I avoid these penalties?

Before submitting your work make sure you double check the word limit, and what is and isn’t included in the count. If in doubt, ask!

Official results are sent to your home address by the central Student Services Centre during August. Provisional results are available online in mid-July.

If you fail to meet the progression requirements for the degree (eg if you fail more than one exam), you will be automatically sent details to your email address by the central administration on what you need to do next. This will be done by the end of July.

The School provides comprehensive guidance on Challenging Results. You cannot appeal against provisional marks, you can only submit an appeal once your results have been formally released on LSE for You. If you feel that you need to appeal a mark, please take time to familiarise yourself with these processes. You must submit your appeal within 10 working days of the release of your results. The appeal process is a last resort for candidates who were unable to engage with the School's other procedures at the right time.

Please note that challenging the academic judgement of individual examiners or the Examination Boards cannot form the basis of any appeal. That means you cannot appeal if you disagree with a grade or feedback. The School is confident that its approach to the marking of students’ summative work is sufficiently robust and you are consequently unable to call into question academic judgement. There is no provision, therefore, for summative work to be re-marked.

If you have any issues during your studies, it is very important that you seek advice and assistance at the earliest opportunity.  If you encounter difficulties of any nature, we recommend that you contact your academic advisor and/or the Advice Team in the first instance. Please also acquaint yourself with the Exceptional Circumstances procedures.

Independent advice about making an appeal and the process can be obtained from LSE Students' Union Advice Centre.