Blog: What is Clearing?

If you’re hoping to study a degree at a college or uni, you’re more than likely sick of hearing the word ‘clearing’ and if not, you probably live under a rock in Bikini Bottom.

Clearing is a process managed by UCAS that gives students a last minute opportunity (regardless of how rare it seems that any student would ever leave anything until the last minute…) to secure a place on a course. It doesn’t matter whether you didn’t quite get the grades you needed, you’ve not yet got around to applying for uni or you’re having second thoughts about your current course – you’re eligible for clearing.

The number one rule when it comes to surviving clearing is to keep calm. Remember colleges and universities love to see a room full of eager faces in their 9am lectures, so they try to make the process as accommodating as possible to fill up any empty seats.

There’s a common misconception that clearing is only for people that didn’t quite get the results they were hoping for – but this simply isn’t the case. Shock horror, sometimes students find that they actually do better than they expected. In this euphoric scenario, you may decide that you’d like to swap your uni place for another with higher entry requirements. This is essentially the clearing process but dressed up as ‘adjustment’.

One last pointer before I leave you to start hitting up those clearing hotlines is that you also have the opportunity to swap to another course at the same college or uni (assuming you’ve already applied) or a completely different one.

In case you’re in need of any more advice, please see our clearing page.