Neil Turner

This is one of those rare occasions where I talk about my day job. Today is Results Day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland had theirs on Tuesday last week) when the results of this summer’s A-level examinations are released. This also means that many 18 year olds will find out if they have achieved the grades they need for the university place, and if not, whether they’ll need to go into Clearing.

I’ve been involved in Clearing in some way every year since 2004. It’s always our busiest day of the year at work, hence this was written a few weeks ago as I’ll not have had the time to write this today. Things have changed a lot over the past 22 years, and so I thought it would be interesting to look back on how different Clearing is now compared to 2004.

I’m not going to go into detail about what Clearing is – there’s a guide from UCAS that is updated each year and less likely to go out of date. This is more about what has changed, and my perspective on it – especially from the point of view of someone who works in higher education.

As usual when I write about work, everything here represents my own opinions and experiences, and this does not necessarily represent the official view of my employer. My experiences are also not necessarily reflective across all UK universities, and represent my time at one particular university.

My experience of Clearing as an applicant

So, confession time: I never went through Clearing as an applicant myself. I applied through the main UCAS scheme at the end of 2021 to six universities (you can only choose five nowadays) and got offers from five of them. My first choice was UMIST, which is now part of the University of Manchester, and my insurance (second) choice was the University of Bradford. I didn’t get the grades for UMIST, but was accepted by Bradford, and so went there and graduated three years later. Now, I work there.

Because I was accepted by my insurance choice, and was happy with it, I didn’t have to go through Clearing. Had my results been worse, or I’d had a change of heart and wanted to go elsewhere, then I would have needed to apply through Clearing for whatever courses were available.

Clearing course listings

Nowadays, the UCAS web site has a centralised list of courses with vacancies in Clearing. When courses fill up, universities can simply close the course on the UCAS portal, and it no longer shows in the results.

Back in the early 2000s, things weren’t so straightforward. Instead, starting from Results Day, newspapers would print listings of courses each day which had vacancies, along with the phone number for each university. UCAS provided data for official listings in The Independent, and one of the tabloids (I’m going to say the Daily Mirror but I might be wrong). However, for some years The Guardian also printed their own listings, presumably combing university web sites for course availability.

Applying for a place

If you wanted a place in Clearing in the 2000s, then you needed to phone the university in question. There was pretty much no other way, although I remember some people (usually with their parents) travelling to the university to ask about places in person.

The first Clearing I helped out with was as a student call handler in 2004 – my first experience of working in what was essentially a call centre. We would enter callers’ details onto our IT system – we use a newer version of the same software nowadays but it’s changed a lot over the years. This would include basic details like name, date of birth, contact details, including a full address, their grades and chosen course. This could then be passed to someone more senior to make a decision or conduct an interview over the phone.

I understand that even some of the bigger universities were not yet using computerised systems for taking Clearing calls at that time, and instead relying on handwritten forms that were passed around.

Two decades on, and most universities will now allow you to apply online. Some may take enquiries via live chat, on social media, or even using your smart speaker in the case of Leeds Beckett University. However, phone calls seem to still be the main way people enquire about places.

Clearing offers

If you have the grades a university is looking for, then they may be able to verbally offer you a place over the phone. Such offers are usually heavily caveated; some callers lie and tell universities that their grades are better than they really are, but sometimes data can be inputted incorrectly. The letters ‘D’ and ‘B’ can sound very similar on a phone call, but are very different grades. We’re encouraged to use the phonetic alphabet, just to be sure.

Early on, we would have to print out offer letters which would be hastily stuffed into envelopes and posted first class, to arrive the following day. Nowadays, offers are made by email, often with the email being triggered automatically during the phone call. These then give instructions for how to accept the offer, and how to provide proof of the stated qualifications if needed.

Number caps

In years gone by, Clearing mostly had an end date for most universities, usually by early September. That’s because there were fewer universities in the UK, and there were caps on the numbers of students that could be recruited by those universities. Any university that went significantly over the cap would get fined, and would essentially be teaching those extra students for free, or at a loss.

Student number caps are mostly a thing of the past. Popular courses will still fill up and close, though, for one or more reasons:

• If the course includes work placements (such as Nursing, Medicine or another course that trains you to become a healthcare professional) then there will be a limit on how many placements are available each year.
• Courses with significant practical elements may also have limits due to lab space or equipment availability.
• Numbers may also be imposed to ensure that the students on the course have a good experience – especially for popular courses that could otherwise go way over their targets.

But nowadays, some courses may remain open well into September, perhaps still recruiting students after the course has officially started. Late enrollers will, of course, need to catch up, but we sometimes get students who have started a course elsewhere, not liked it, and wanted to enrol onto something else rather than waste a year.

What else has changed

A big change that has happened over the years is that (many) universities now accept a wide variety of vocational qualifications, besides the traditional A-levels. The common ones are BTECs, Cambridge Technicals, T-Levels and NCFE CACHE qualifications, but there are hundreds on the UCAS tariff which can, at least theoretically, be used towards university admission. There are also International Baccalaureate qualifications, and Access to HE Diplomas taken mainly by adults wanting to return to education after a break or career change.

Incidentally, the UK is unusual, compared to many other countries, as the vast majority of our university courses don’t have an entrance exam. Those courses that do tend to be dentistry, medicine and veterinary science, and the entrance exams tend to focus more on aptitude rather than knowledge. Instead, we use qualifications as a de-facto entrance exam, with higher grades generally allowing access to the more demanding and prestigious courses.

Another change that I’ve noticed is the core Clearing period becoming compressed over time. Results Day has felt like a bigger and busier day each year, and then enquiries have trailed off more quickly. In the 2000s, we could expect to still be busy during the week after Results Day, as some applicants sometimes didn’t hear back from their firm and insurance choices until after the weekend (Results Day is always a Thursday). Now, even the Friday after Results Day is significantly quieter than in previous years.

If you’re receiving your A-level result today, then I hope you have done well, and got a place at the university that you want to go to. If not, and we have places on the course you want, why not give my lovely colleagues a call?