|
Ten tips for Clearing Success
1. Don’t go on holiday
Don’t go on away in the days after the results come out. You need to be at home to make and receive telephone calls, deal with correspondence and make on the spot decisions.
2. Don’t make rash decisions
You’re likely to be feeling down if you haven’t got the results you wanted. It’s tempting to grab the first available place out of fear that all the vacancies will be snapped up if you don’t act quickly.
Don’t rush into a panic decision. One of the commonest causes of students dropping out of higher education is because they accepted a place during Clearing that didn’t really suit them. Give yourself a short breathing space to think things through and plan your Clearing strategy.
3. Get advice
You may be feeling confused and unsure of what to do next. Talk things over with someone. Friends and family can help but sometimes they’re a little too close to see things clearly.
Talk to someone like a teacher or careers adviser. You may want to rethink your original course choice. You may decide you don’t want to enter Clearing at this time. You could discuss alternatives like re-sitting and applying again next year or not going onto higher education at all. If you do decide to go ahead with Clearing teachers and careers advisers have the knowledge and experience to guide you successfully through the Clearing process.
4. Be realistic
The more popular the course and/or university the greater the competition will be from other Clearing applicants.Be realistic about what courses are likely to be open to you. This may mean re-thinking your original course choice and looking at a different sort of university.
Very popular courses like law, medicine and physiotherapy are unlikely to have vacancies during Clearing. Generally speaking arts, humanities and social science courses have fewer vacancies than science and technology based courses.
Clearing almost always has more vacancies than you think. Don't be put off if you want to do a "popular" course. Be flexible about where you study and try looking at:
- courses which are similar to what you want but which do not receive so many applicants (e.g. ‘Social History’ instead of ‘History')
- courses which combine the subject you want with another which is less popular
- less well-known courses
- new courses
- courses at less well-known universities
5. Know what you’re applying for
Before contacting any university make sure you understand exactly what you’re applying for. Vacancies are often listed under general headings which only give a rough idea of what the course is about.
Check out the university or college itself. It needs to be somewhere you want to spend the next three/four years of your life.
Use prospectuses, books and university web sites to find out more.
Make sure you really want to do the course and that you know enough about it to convince an admissions tutor that you’re genuinely interested.
Next 5 tips >>
|
