Greg Daly
Greg Daly finds out how the ‘clearing’ process can offer students possibilities they might not have imagined
“I got my place at Salford University through clearing,” says Manchester-based Christopher.
“When I got my A level results,” he continues, “I dropped a grade in Chemistry which is what I wanted to study – so even though I still got the grades asked for, they were in the wrong subjects so the place I was holding at Nottingham wasn’t available to me.”
Clearing is a system used by applicants to British universities who have left it late to apply for courses in the UK, or whose results were not as expected. A way for universities to fill places on undersubscribed courses, it – along with the related process known as ‘adjustment’ specifically for when students do better than they expect in exams – is sometimes seen as a stressful last resort, but it’s an option that can give students real options.
It’s also an option worth considering for Irish students whose Leaving Cert points weren’t what they expected, or who have changed their mind since sitting their exams about what they want to do at third level.
Crucial stages
For 27-year-old Stephen, a production manager in an engineering firm based in the British midlands, clearing gave him a way to make up for indecision during his crucial final stages at school.
“While I was doing my A Levels, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and I ended up thinking I wanted to do history,” he says, explaining that he applied to study history at the universities of Leeds and Aberystwyth in north Wales.
“I didn’t get the grades to get into Leeds,” he continues, “and my second choice was Aberystwyth. I did get the grades to get into Aberystwyth, but I decided I didn’t want to go to Aberystwyth, probably just because of how long it would take me to get home on the train, mainly.”
He decided against studying in the Welsh university and opted instead to try seeing if he could use clearing to study somewhere closer to home, looking online to see what options were available.
“My sister had gone to Nottingham, and I saw that History and Ancient History came up, so I applied for that and got in,” he says, explaining that by Christmas he realised that while he was fond of the university itself, the course there wasn’t for him.
“I just wasn’t enjoying it and didn’t think it was the right thing,” he says, “so I went and spoke to the university and said, look, I really don’t want to do this, but I want to stick with the university. What I really want to do is manufacturing and engineering, and they said, ‘we can put you on that course’. So they didn’t check my A levels or anything, they just said ‘we’ll put you on the course, but you can’t start until next year’.”
Such a radical change of course may seem unlikely, but Stephen had a family background in the area, which he hadn’t previously thought he was qualified to work in.
“My dad runs an engineering business anyway,” he explains, “so I’ve always worked in that field. I was working part-time there at the time, and I always kind of wanted to get into it, but I didn’t have the right A Levels – I didn’t take chemistry or anything like that.”
He had found through studying history that “sitting at home reading all the time” didn’t come naturally to him, whereas his own work experience, he believed, fitted him well for the more practical nature of an engineering degree. That he hadn’t thought of this in advance is hardly surprising – for many teenagers approaching the end of their schooling, so much emphasis goes into Leaving Certificate, A Levels, or other final exams that serious research and reflection on what comes next can be neglected.
Terms
“When I’d finished my A Levels,” Stephen says, “I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do, not a clue, and I picked history because I was doing an A Level in it. I was really enjoying it, but I didn’t have a clue what that was going to lead to in terms of a job. I just kind of went with the flow a little bit.”
Clearing, combined for a flexibility at Nottingham that might not seem obvious from outside, had overall proved an excellent experience for him. “I think for me, everything worked out,” he says, adding, “I might’ve gotten a bit lucky along the way, but everything worked out exactly how I wanted it to, and I got all my engineering courses.”
In particular, he notes that the course he eventually settled on – and the career it has since given him – wouldn’t have been an option had he followed the most obvious route.
“From my A Levels I never would’ve got there,” he says, “so I think it’s a good option for people because it gives you a bit more in terms of understanding what is out there, because some of the courses I’d never even heard of, so you’re looking and you’re like, ‘Oh, actually I might be quite good at that’.”
Clearing proved a useful safety net for Bath-based Helen, 22, who had had aspirations of going to Oxford but whose International Baccalaureate exams coincided with a period of serious illness.
“I did my International Baccalaureate in two sections because I was ill,” she explains, adding that, “in the first section I did extremely well and then I did not do so well on the second section.”
With the Oxford place she had been conditionally offered falling through, Helen instead turned to see what places were available at other universities, taking a place at the University of Sussex where she started off with a philosophy degree.
Finding the degree wasn’t what she had been banking on, she became unhappy in her course and spoke to her student advisor.
“I was doing a minor in law and my advisor said you know you could transfer to law if you’re miserable,” she says, “and I was so I did.”
The result was a law degree that hadn’t even been on her horizon when she was sitting her International Baccalaureate.
“I was impressed,” she says of her clearing experience, explaining that, “there was absolutely no way they would let me through the front door to do law with my extremely patchy transcript.”
Admitting that she had done better in her law studies than she probably would have done had she studied philosophy, and that this could not have happened without trying clearing, she says, “I actually think it works quite well – my other option would’ve been waiting another year and that would’ve been impractical to say the least. It works in a straight line, supply and demand, and while the process is obviously somewhat flawed it does work.”
All conditions for courses in British universities must be met by August 31, while the deadline for 2016 university entry submissions is 6pm on September 20. Clearing course vacancies can be found through search.ucas.com