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I'm graduating cum laude with good to great grades in all courses, near the top of my class, which should be a nice starting point for a good first job.

Or rather, I would graduate if not for one course I somehow underestimated. Now I have to come back in August to take a resit.

This should not have happened and I learned a lesson there. But because this was entirely my fault and not due to any difficulties with the course material, I'm very unlikely to fail the resit as well. And because the course is also fairly specific and not relevant for the career branch I want to work in, I'm hoping I can still start applying for jobs at the end of the academic year in July.

How should I put this on my resume, considering the typical student with resits usually has a lot of them and is struggling with the material and not someone you want to hire as a top employer?

On the top employer note, I have a good internship lined up that could lead into a job and a "young talent" fast track starting in July that technically requires successful graduation. I'm hoping to ace the internship first and demonstrate my value to the business to make negotiations about this easier, but they are inevitably going to ask how the exams went before I have a chance to prove myself; what should I tell them?

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  • By "resit", do you mean re-take an exam? Or you'll need to take a full semester to finish it?
    – Nobody
    Jan 19, 2019 at 13:30
  • Retake an exam, yes. (Don't know the terminology in English.)
    – Hene
    Jan 19, 2019 at 14:13
  • @scaaahu "re -sit" does mean and can only mean "re -sit" ! (In English.)
    – Fattie
    Jan 19, 2019 at 15:45
  • But do they have to resit the entire course or resit the final exam, course grades are not typically, based on a single grade but cumulative of the entire work done in the class
    – Donald
    Jan 19, 2019 at 19:58
  • When the grade is based on the entire course, you can't just retake the exam and have to do the entire thing over, but this particular course is just an exam.
    – Hene
    Jan 19, 2019 at 20:37

2 Answers 2

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Good news: you're overthinking this. You don't have to mention resits in your CV at all. If you don't have your degree yet, you can say Expected June 2019 or whatever. If you list final grades (not saying it's a good idea or not, just covering the possibility) you can just say Exam pending.

You can, of course, talk about it during the interview if they ask about any difficulties with your studies, and you can say exactly what you said here: You underestimated the material and didn't study as much as you should, you have learned from that mistake, and expect to smash it come resit time. From my perspective this isn't a struggling student, this is a normal/good student who has everything under control.

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The only advice would be (whether written or spoken) underplay it as much as possible.

So I could see your resume having a line something like

Master of Social Software Engineering, cum laude, 2019 University of Sydney (one exam to resit 17th Aug.)

You know?

In verbal, err, speech,

so the other person says somethign like

"So I see you have a cum degree from Sydney .. etc .."

and you say

"You know Mr Smith, I totally blew one exam on that - I have to re-sit August 17th. Yes, I majored in systems and operations. My professor was Professor Bojangles."

Simply "come out with it" but make it a fait accompli - DON'T go on and on about it, DON'T make it jokey, DON'T go in to details.

I hope this principle helps in some way.

Note, on the written side, @Rath's answer is even better:

You don't have to mention it at all.

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