What Is Clearing And How Should You Go About It?

When you are waiting for your A-level results, you will be thinking about the next step that you are going to take. You will have already picked a few universities that you want to study and you will have applied to them. In a perfect world, everyone would get the results they need to get into the university of their choice. However, sometimes this does not happen and you will need to go through the clearing process.

What Is The Clearing Process?

The clearing process allocates students to universities if they have failed to get the grades that they need or if they did not receive any offers from universities. You should not get discouraged if this happens to you because you will still be able to go to university, even if it is not one of your first choices.

Clearing in 2017 opens before your results are due. People who have received no offers can use the service from when it opens. People who have been accepted to universities before their results come out need to wait until after Results Day to begin the clearing process.

How Should You Approach The Clearing Process?

There are several things that you need to do in order to be successful during the clearing process. Firstly, you should make sure that you apply as soon as you are able to. This will give you the best possible chance to claim a university place because otherwise you might be left out if you leave it too late.

 You should keep checking the UCAS website to see when you become eligible for university clearing. Once you have become eligible, you need to be extremely proactive: you can personally call universities to check whether they have any places available for your desired course. Sometimes you will see a space for your desired course advertised on university websites. Then you can email or phone the university to follow up on this lead.

Going away on holiday might jeopardise your chances of finding a spot through the clearing programme, so you should cancel any plans that you had if you don’t get the results that you wanted. You might miss some vital information if you are away on holidays, such as a phone call from a university or a letter from UCAS.

You can check your email account on a regular basis to make sure that you are kept up to date with all the clearing information.

One of the best strategies that you can adopt is to combine your original course choice with another subject. For example, you might have chosen to do media studies, but you weren’t accepted by any universities. You can then combine the media studies course with something like international relations to give you more chance of being accepted.

The clearing process is ideal if you did not get the results that you wanted at A level.