Exam results by text = smiley craze

by niyam bhushan

It seems like a fantastic thought, and more and more colleges are offering students the opportunity to receive their exam consequences by text or email. To a certain extent this is excellent, people can go on holiday or except extra hours at work without having to worry in this area all their friends getting their consequences and them being the only person who doesn’t know. But some times tradition just doesn’t gel with technology and colleges insist on trying to send consequences in a traditional format on new media.

No-one in their right mind would forecast a problem with this but look at the following message, a genuine college text message on consequences day, and see if you can decipher the grade before I tell you:

“Your exam result for Business Studies, A Level is (. Friend the college on … if you need any advice or help.”

So what grade did this, and no doubt countless other students, receive? Maybe the open bracket is supposed to be a C and they stuck in a smiley face to make you lucky that you passed. Maybe, but no.

The answer is in fact a grade B. Certificates and other “authoritative documents” concerning to exam grades always show the grade in brackets: (A), (B), (C) etc. Nobody says “I got a bracket C in Maths” or “I got a bracket A close bracket in English” but they are always there in writing and the colleges chose to keep the traditional brackets in house when texting consequences. But the genius of mobile phones, SMS and our glorious txt language, automatically converted (B) into ( and mix-up reigned supreme.

So there it is, if any of you were high and mighty you’d passed because you were sent a smiley face but were dearly wishing you knew the actual grade then have a quicker look. If you find out what you need to type to make the smiley then you will know your grade, and if anyone got a smiley for an IT or Computing course who hadn’t worked it out yet; you now also know why you didn’t get an A!

Tags: Bhushan, Brackets, Business Studies, Certificates, Closer Look, Colleges, Confusion, craze, Email, exam, Exam Grades, Exam Result, Exam Results, Extent, Genius, Maths, Mobile Phones, No Doubt, Open Bracket, Results, smiley, Smiley Face, text, Text Message, Tradition

Category: College It Courses Article