Hello, my name’s Elly and I came to university through clearing, I currently study Medical Imaging at the University of Exeter and I am in my second year. This blog post is about how best to prepare yourself for results day and if you need to go through clearing how best to approach it!
Firstly, congrats on getting your exams done; A-levels, IB and BTECs are some of the toughest exams you’ll ever do! The summer after should be spent enjoying yourself and preparing for the next steps. If you have already applied for university and got your offers back and chosen your places that’s great but it is worth being aware of clearing and how it works just in case you need it!
Clearing works when all the offers given out to students come back. When you decline your offer, the space becomes available for someone else, and in clearing students get the chance to take up those extra spaces.
So, before results day make sure you have a look on a couple of university websites for their clearing offers. A course you wanted to do might be available for lower grades than before or you see a course that you hadn’t seen before and are interested.
Clearing isn’t just for people who’ve missed grades, you can decline your offers or if you get better than expected you can perhaps get into a course that wasn’t achievable before! You can use clearing if you’re applying later than the 30th of June, you didn’t receive any offers (or none you wanted to accept), you didn’t meet the conditions of your offers or declined your firm place in your application.
Top tips for before clearing:
- Research any courses you are interested in first, so you have a list of anything you’d be happy to study.
- Note down the university’s clearing phone number and your own applicant and clearing number too so if you call up, the person on the phone can sort it out quicker, which is less stressful than trying to find all the information on the day!
- It’s worth phoning more than one university up even if they make you an offer over the phone so that you can have the choice, especially if it wasn’t a uni you had initially considered.
- Take a virtual tour of the campuses of the unis you are interested in; it can help with a decision.
- Sometimes current students of the unis are available to chat to and they can tell you about their experiences there. There is a chat website called UniBuddy which I am signed up for to answer any questions incoming students may have about anything university related.
- Keep checking your emails and phone throughout the day in case someone gets back to you!
- Have your grades out as well and the subjects they were in, some courses ask for a science A-level, but science can count as many things such as Geography, Psychology and Physical Education.
- And finally – call them yourself! Don’t make your parents or friends do it, if you can talk about yourself and why you should get the place it helps to gain a sense of who you are that would have come from the personal statement.
Best of luck!!
Elly