1st year student with poor results

EmaanAraZaidi

New Member
Sep 10, 2025
1
0
Hello everyone! During my first year exam period I unfortunately received very poor results due to struggles in my personal life and also a war happening in my home country while my exams occured. The latter did affect my performance completely as an international student worried for my family back home and I received barely passing grades in the exams due to this. I fear despite my circumstances this may result in me being unable to receive any vacation schemes and training contracts. Does anyone know if I can do anything to rectify this or if I have any options at all? My A-level results were also not the best but that was my failing wholly
 

vera.mekhonoshina

Valued Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Sep 7, 2023
104
103
Hello everyone! During my first year exam period I unfortunately received very poor results due to struggles in my personal life and also a war happening in my home country while my exams occured. The latter did affect my performance completely as an international student worried for my family back home and I received barely passing grades in the exams due to this. I fear despite my circumstances this may result in me being unable to receive any vacation schemes and training contracts. Does anyone know if I can do anything to rectify this or if I have any options at all? My A-level results were also not the best but that was my failing wholly
Hi @EmaanAraZaidi,

Thank you for opening up about your experiences - I can't imagine how hard it must have been to sit exams while being worried about the safety of your family and facing other personal struggles. I am sorry you had to go through that.

In an application, you'd be able to contextualise your results through the mitigating circumstances section, where you can describe the situation in full and explain how exactly this affected your performance. Firms take contextual recruitment seriously and seek to understand the candidate's full profile, assessing their grades against their wider background.

However, I would also try to highlight that you are actively working towards improving your grades and detail the specific steps that you are taking in this direction.

Good luck!
 

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