There is a written examination on the APL course material at the end of the year, and exam marks contribute 80% of the final course grade. The exam paper follows a similar format each year, with exactly one sitting and no resit paper.

Exam format

The APL exam lasts two hours and has three questions, each made up of several short sections. You should answer exactly two of the three questions. The marks available for each question and sub-question are shown on the exam paper.

Past papers

The University Library publishes copies of past exam papers in all subjects. Some of these are only available from within the local network: if you connect from outside Edinburgh then you may need to log in with your EASE username and password.

Link: Exam Papers Online

APL exam papers by year
2010/2011	2009/2010	2008/2009	2007/2008

Marks and grades

All courses at Edinburgh use a standard scheme where work is marked out of 100 and assigned a grade from A to H. Undergraduate courses use the Extended Common Marking Scheme CMS1. The pass mark for each course is 40, and an A grade requires a score of 70 or higher. For postgraduate students, the award of MSc generally require a mark of at least 50.

Link: Extended Common Marking Scheme

Exam date

The APL exam takes place at the end of the academic year, in the April/May diet. The exact date and time are set centrally by the University during Semester 2, taking into account all course registrations by all students to avoid direct clashes. The Student Administration Service will publish these dates online; when this happens you can find details in the searchable exam timetable under course code INFR11101.

Links: Student Administration Service exam information; Timetables.