YOUR OPTIONS IF YOU DIDN'T GET A PLACE


If you don't get any offers for a place at university or, if on results day, you didn't get the grades that you need to take up your place at university, then you have a lot of options, so do not despair as it is not the end.


You can apply through Clearing. If you didn't get any offers, you're at a slight advantage with Clearing because you can plan ahead, but if you do have an offer and on results day you find you don't get the grades, you're going to need to have a plan in place in advance. You cannot leave Clearing or the possibility of Clearing, until results day. Have a look at the UCAS Clearing website and see what courses and universities are available.


Maybe you have your dream university in place and you just need to change your course ever so slightly. Would adding on a year in placement, a year abroad, a second subject like a foreign language, or psychology, or business, or management, change the grade boundaries ever so slightly? Even if they don't change the grade boundaries, they might still have places, and they might still accept you, if they're under-subscribed for a certain year.


If you have a dream course in mind, could you change your university ever so slightly, can you go a bit further away, or a bit closer to home? Can you change the type of university from a city to a campus? Ideally, you will have the chance to have looked around all of these places before you apply, but things can happen very quickly in Clearing, so that isn't always going to be the case. Use the internet, it's a fantastic place, there are so many people student vlogging from YouTube, so you can actually get a feel for what the universities are like without always having to visit.


You can wait, and this is going to be a hard one, and I mean wait and apply next year. So, if there's nothing you fancy in Clearing and you still have this dream course, this dream degree in mind, and you can't find it through Clearing, then wait and reapply next year. Get your application in as soon as it opens in September, so that you are right there at the beginning, at the top of the pile, you'll have your grades already, you'll have those sorted, so you won't have the stress of waiting around, trying to work out where to apply. Start planning that now, and get your application in as soon as it opens. You won't have the stress of waiting on results day in August, you will actually know whether you've got the place there and then, and then you can kind of relax a little bit. You can take this as, kind of like, an enforced gap year, and use this time to really bump up your personal statement. Really bump up your CV and make it look amazing and I don't just mean by going to work in the local supermarket or  in the local pub. You're going to need to get some fantastic work experience and volunteering on there and, because you won't have school exams to distract you, you can really focus on working out exactly what you want to do and how you're going to get  the experience, the opportunities, the volunteering and the work experience to show that you're going to be amazing for this particular degree.


You have the option of re-sitting year thirteen, or re-sitting year twelve and year thirteen, so that you can try and improve your grades. Now, some of you are going to be July and August birthdays, which means you are nearly a whole year younger than some of the other people in your year, which means on results day, you may not even be legally allowed to celebrate with a drink in a pub. For some of you, this is going to be a big difference, and for those of you who maybe struggled a little bit, maybe there's a lot of stuff going on in your personal life, re-sitting year thirteen is a really sensible and viable option for you. This will give you the opportunity to really think about what you want to do at university, really improve on your A-Level grades, and the gives you the chance to get more experience and boost your personal statement. You can think about whether you actually want to go to university at all because university isn't right for everybody. Maybe going out and getting a job straight away would be a better option, maybe getting an apprenticeship or a degree apprenticeship course would also be something that might suit you a little bit better. Do not despair, everything is not lost, you have lots and lots of options.