To obtain their degree, final year students of psychology in the UK normally complete a set of examination papers and a dissertation, and the marks obtained for these pieces of work are usually combined with marks obtained for coursework completed in the second year. With joint-honours degrees the marks obtained for psychology are combined with those obtained for the other subject. Here we comment on some of the difficulties inherent in these procedures and focus, in particular, on how student excellence/exceptionality may be inadvertently suppressed.