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Comment by cjd8 | Hacker News Reader

Great job! A few months ago I was kicked out of university for failing my Real Analysis course a second time (4 years of CS suddenly gone, thesis was half done) and had to get a full time job. Now I got accepted to a different public university to study on a weekend basis. This article makes me less anxious about my upcoming studies.

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You can reapply as a new student and get your finished classes accepted as finished in the new study.

My friend was in a similar situation as you, the same school, possibly, except it was "Electric Circuits 2".

On Wednesday he failed the last exam, Thursday he applied as new student, on Monday he was 1st year student and by Friday he was 3rd year student with all classes accepted. Still had to do the Electric Circuits 2 of course.

That sounds incredibly harsh. What kind of university was it? Is there more to the story?

Kicking someone out and effectively voiding all progress just for failing one challenging final year class twice is completely mad.

Was it rather that you lost a scholarship and couldn’t afford to finish or something like that?

Sorry to dwell, I’m sure it must be painful, I wish you the best luck.

Essentially all Czech universities have a rule where you can only twice enroll in the same course - failing to do so will lead to termination. Nevertheless I still have my credits so I'll try to get them accepted at the new university.

It was mostly painful to see people I had courses with graduate just this month, however I do have a good software engineering job so all is well?

is there no way to appeal? It works the same in Polish uni I'm in, but uhh, there I was allowed to appeal and they stamped it by default

And I'm very sorry to hear that either way :(

There is, however I didn't really have a valid reason for an appeal so I just went ahead with it and started applying for jobs.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in Denmark, universities get a part of their funding based on the number of graduates. So the university has an incentive to help student actually graduate instead of kicking them out. That may or may not matter to the bureaucrat responding to an appeal - but I'd certainly not just assume that "I'm close to graduation, just let me do this one more exam attempt" isn't a good enough reason for them to let you try.

Ah, well in the Czech Republic universities get funding based on the number of currently enrolled students, not graduates. Some places will therefore accept 1000 into a CS program, only to have <100 people actually graduate.

As for the appeal - these usually aren't successful, even my thesis advisor said that he probably wouldn't go out of his way to talk to the analysis course examiner etc. etc.

You miss every shot you don't take. Don't be ashamed or afraid to appeal. At worst, nothing changes.

Sorry, that strikes me as the norm. Graduation is predicated on passing certain courses, and obviously you can't take it an arbitrary number of times. So fail an exam twice, and you're out. (Some universities offer a final oral exam after failing a written exam twice.)

Very sorry to hear that. Glad you're still going on, that's the right mindset!

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