The Resubmission Statement

This article explores how a good resubmission statement is your key to success on resubmission.
Unless you are resubmitting on a different topic or company, you have to compete this statement so why
not make it a good one?! The Resubmission statement is potentially one of the most useful documents
that you will produce if you are resubmitting. Unfortunately, the purpose of this highly important
document often seems to be misunderstood. It should be clear that this is not just another form that you
need to fill at the end prior to loading your files. It is recommended that the very first thing you do before
you even begin to start preparing your resubmission is to spend some time on this. This will help save
your time and energy.

The purpose of the Resubmission statement is to make you do some self-reflection. To make you sit down
and reflect on the reasons why you failed last time. This way, by recognizing your deficiencies, you should
be able to focus on what went wrong and how you can overcome the areas of weakness. This
contemplation and self-reflection is more likely to lead to a successful resubmission.

Instead of seeing it as a defeat acceptance, look at it as your personal ‘Action Plan to Pass the RAP’. The
first thing you should do is to not try to replicate what a friend or colleague wrote in their resubmission
statement. This might get you a second chance but you’ll miss out on a very valuable opportunity to be
proactive about your own work. The effective statement is the one which reflects the person and
obviously has more weightage if written by the person himself.

Writing resubmission statement can be a difficult job since you are trying to identify and admit to your
mistakes, but it is not impossible. In fact, if you think objectively and write the statement with the idea
that you are moving one step towards betterment then it will help you earn a second chance as well as a
good insight of your work as well.

Here are some of the few steps that can help you write a good resubmission statement. Please be aware
that these are not set in stone, rather these are a just a stepping stone for you to reach your goal:

Read through the marker feedback. This will help you identify, in detail, not just the areas you failed but
more specifically why you didn’t satisfy the assessment criteria for a pass grade.

Concentrate on these areas or activities that were failed. Write down the reasons and points so they will
help you draft a more specific statement.

Look at each of these in turn and consult the Assessment Criteria for a Pass in the latest Information Pack
(currently Appendix 1). Understand the gaps between the criteria and your paper and understand what
you didn’t get right.

Then it is self-reflection time. If you do Self-Reflection you might be able to impress the marker on your
resubmission by mentioning how you used self-evaluation of what went wrong to help you with your
Resubmission Statement and rectifying your work.

Do a thorough gap analysis and then write down the things that you think might fill in the gap and help
you achieve a passing grade from a failing one. For example the feedback may have said in relation to
Topic 8 that your evaluation consisted mainly of ratio calculations and statements of whether sales or
profits etc. increased/decreased but not any real analysis. According to the assessment criteria ‘Little or
no critical evaluation’ leads to failure, whereas ‘High level of critical thought shown in the analysis and a
rigorous approach to the evaluation of information’ is required for an A grade and ’Strength shown in
some areas of critical review of the information. Good evaluation of information’ would give a B. From
this it is clear that in relation to Evaluation of Information and Analysis, a critical approach determines the
grade- so this is the ‘gap’ you need to bridge to pass.

The next thing you should think is how you can introduce some critical evaluation into your work.

A further example which demonstrates the sort of comments to make in the statement might be the
following in relation to failure in the Referencing element of Information Gathering and Referencing,

Let’s say that the feedback said something like:

“Your referencing was inconsistent: in many places it was missing completely and some references were
hard to find in the Reference List because it did not comply with Harvard referencing.”

So this would mean that in order to pass on re-submission the referencing must be more systematic.
Which means that you should have used Harvard style referenicing system or some other pre-defined
system which shows a clear list of all refernces.

In addressing this, the first step would be to read all the guidance on referencing so you understand what
referencing actually is and the next step would be applying it to your work to show that the referencing
issue has been resolved.

When all of this has been carried out then it would be appropriate to update your draft resubmission
statement by repeating the moderator’s comments and then saying how you corrected and improved
them.

So with the Information Gathering and Referencing example above

“I read the Resubmission Guide and all the Guidance I could find on referencing and as suggested I have
made it systematic by using the Harvard system to deal with the problem that references could not be
found in the list. I have gone through my whole report and made sure that I have supplied references as
required for all of the statements that I have made as I now understand the importance of referencing to
support my findings and to avoid any possibility of plagiarism”

So the Resubmission statement is a useful working checklist to help you make the best of your
resubmission and get the passing grades. Use it well and you should get your BSc.

As that is probably the reason behind it, you can’t actually be failed on the Resubmission Statement itself
but a poor statement would probably indicate that not enough thought and application had gone into the
resubmission itself and therefore the errors and omissions haven’t been addressed properly. If that
happens, then another failure could be the final outcome. So invest some time in your statement. Good
luck.