Student Kills Herself After University Email Mistakenly Informed Her That She Failed An Exam

A 21-year-old student reportedly killed herself after she received an email from her university that wrongfully informed her that she had failed an exam and could not proceed to her third year in college.

Mared Foulkes, 21, of Menai Bridge, Anglesey, a second-year pharmacy student at Cardiff University, reportedly committed suicide by jumping from Britannia Bridge in the United Kingdom hours after she received an email saying that she would not be able to progress to the third year of her course, BBC reported.

Foulkes received an automated email from her university hours before her death. The email reportedly stated that Foulkes had failed an exam with a score of 39 percent when in fact she had passed the test with a 62 percent grade. The 39 percent was related to a practical test that she took on March 26 as part of a module called formulation sciences. She went on to request a re-test on April 24 and passed the exam. However, her email from the university did not take this re-test into account, Daily Mail reported.

Foulkes' mother, Iona Foulkes said that it was "plain and simple" that her daughter's suicide was a direct result of receiving the callous email from the university.

"She received an automatic email, there was nothing personal, no phone call, nothing," the Foulkes matriarch said.

"She would have felt like all her dreams and aspirations had finished with that sentence, for a 21-year-old it's unbelievable," she added.

Iona said that her daughter was devoted to her work in the pharmaceutical industry and described her as someone who "loved her family and friends."

Professor Mark Gumbleton, head of the School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University, said that this was standard practice and that they acted within the regulations. He added that the university will look into the situation and that changes would be made to the way exam results are ratified and given to students.

"The challenge is to avoid a situation where we create confusion. I believe the university is looking at this and changes are going to take place," he said.

Foulkes, who had been working in a pharmacy in Caernarfon in between her studies, was described as "lovely, polite and hard-working" by the pharmacy staff.