[NPDW]

Oxbridge is very much exam based assessment. With your degree depending only on the exams taken at the end of the final year. So the take-home assessments are there just to make sure that you understand what you're doing and can progress to the next part of the course.

[arethuza]

I must say that I am rather glad the degree I did at a Scottish university was based mainly of 4th year exams, with an element of 3rd year exams and coursework.

The idea of a averaging all of your work across your course would have been a disaster for me as I did rather poorly in year 1, scraped through year 2 and did spectacularly well in years 3 and 4.

[tonyedgecombe]

I'm not sure about Oxford but certainly for Cambridge you aren't graded overall, instead you get a grade for each part of the tripos[1] (two parts).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripos

[NPDW]

Yes but you generally treat your degree as being graded by whatever you got in part II

[ianopolous]

In Oxford, at least for Physics, your grades from every year (except possibly the first) count, but they are heavily weighted towards later years.