You’ve made it! After two years of hard work, exams and coursework, you’ve made it to Results Day! Today you collected your grades from your school or college and are moving into the next part of your life.
While we hope you got the grades you wanted, you can be proud of yourself for making it through your time at college or sixth form no matter what grades you get. Big congratulations on making it through.
Once you’ve collected your grades, if you’ve applied to universities through UCAS, you may have checked the UCAS site to see if your application has been accepted by the university. Even if you haven’t got the grades of your offer, check anyway. Sometimes universities will accept you with lower grades (it happened to me; it could happen to you) or they may offer you a different course or possibly a foundation year.
What to do if you have been accepted onto the course you want to study at the university you want to study at?
What to do if you have been accepted onto the course you want but you don’t want to start studying straight away?
What to do if you have been accepted onto a course or to a university you don’t want to go to?
What to do if you aren’t accepted onto the course you want to study?
What to do if you’ve not applied to university but decide on results day you might want to go?
What is Clearing?
On results day, lots of university courses are filled with students who have accepted their offers but there are often lots of spaces not taken across the country in a wide range of courses. Clearing is where universities and colleges attempt to fill their courses by allowing extra applications.
To apply for courses through clearing, have a look on the UCAS page for which courses still have places at which universities and what grades they are looking for. This will update through the day as universities make offers to students so the earlier you look, the more choices you will have.
Once you’ve found a course that you want to study and have the grades for, get in contact with the university directly. Easiest way to do this is to ring them.
If you have previously applied to universities through UCAS, find your UCAS number, results and Clearing number before you ring the university to save time. You’ll find your Clearing number on UCAS if you have no accepted offers or have declined your offers. If you haven’t applied previously, just have your results at the ready.
On the call they will take details for your application and see if you reach the entry requirements. If you do, you may need to complete an interview or they may give you a verbal offer there and then. It depends on the course and your application.
If you have any questions about the course or the university, ring them up to ask. They will have people in place to answer your questions as best as they can.
If you can’t find a course that you want to study, don’t stress or panic about it. You can always apply again next year or you could resit your exams or go down a different route, such as an apprenticeship.
So good luck this results day, I hope you get the grades you’re hoping for. Remember that you should be proud of yourself no matter what.