If you don't end up with any offers from universities, don’t panic—you have a chance to put an extra choice on. If you've been rejected from all of your five choices, or if you only applied to one and you got rejected, then you can have another go. But the process is slightly different.
This second chance happens after the UCAS deadline has passed, so we have from mid-February until mid-July to get this sorted out. You need to look through the UCAS website and find courses that have spaces available on them. Then you need to contact the university directly and see if they'll consider you for a place. You can then go and add your next choice onto your UCAS Track. Then we just need to wait for the university's decision. Now, the university may reject you. It may ignore you. If it ignores you for three weeks, then you can go through the process again and pick another course. They may offer you a place and you accept it, in which case, brilliant. Or they might offer you a place, and you might have changed your mind, in which case you can reject it and pick another course. And we can keep picking courses and keep picking courses until you find one that suits you.
If you are in this position, and there aren't courses coming up that you think are going to be a good fit for you, then you can consider taking a gap year and applying straight away in September with your A-Level grades already in hand. This can reduce your stress levels because so much depends on what happens on results day in August. If you apply next year with your results already sorted, then you might get an unconditional offer. You can also tailor which university is your priority based on your grades.
