The ‘common first year’, which operated over eight academic sessions in the Faculty of Applied Science of the University of Nottingham, contained a midsessional examination the results of which were non‐confidential. Some 9293 papers from 1643 students in five departments have been analysed with two aspects in mind, these being the inherent interest such a large amount of ‘real data’ provides, and the effect of classifying results by the ‘grouping’ method practised by arts‐based departments as opposed to the science‐based method of totalling the individual marks.