Has anything changed about university admissions this year, and if so, what advice should teachers give to students receiving their results? We spoke to Ucas to find out
As students receive their A-level results on Thursday, they are bound to have questions about what those results mean for their Ucas applications and chances of going on to university.
Perhaps they didn’t quite get the results they wanted and are wondering what to do next. Or, perhaps they overachieved, but aren’t sure that they want to go to university at all this year if it means that they can’t live in halls and have a proper freshers’ week.
A-level results day 2020: how will Ucas work?
How should teachers respond to these concerns? I spoke to Peter Derrick, head of service delivery at Ucas, to get his advice on what teachers can do to help this year’s Year 13.
Has anything changed this year about the process of accepting university offers?
According to Derrick, although results day itself might be different, with social distancing measures in place, nothing has changed in terms of the Ucas process around accepting offers.
“On results day, Track [Ucas’ online system for tracking university applications] will go live at 8 am. Students can log on from that time and see the status of their offer. Hopefully, they’ll see that the university has made a decision: that they have been placed and they have got their place, and hopefully they can commence their celebrations,” he says.
However, if a student logs into Track and sees that the university hasn’t made a decision yet, that doesn’t mean they should worry. In this situation, Derrick suggests contacting the university to ask why.
“It might be that they are waiting for a piece of evidence or an outstanding GCSE result or something like that. So we don’t want anyone to rush or make panicked decisions on that morning; they’ve got plenty of time and all the resources are available for them there,” he says.
What advice can teachers give to students who don’t get the grades they were hoping for?
“It goes without saying, probably - and I know teachers and advisers say this to their students all the time - but don’t panic! There are still options out there for you,” says Derrick.
He also suggests that teachers should tell these students to check Track, as they may well still have been accepted onto their course despite not getting the grades.
“Many universities - let’s say they’re asking for three Bs - they may still accept you at two Bs and a C or something like that. So check Track to see if you’ve gotten into your firm choice,” he says.
If a student hasn’t been accepted onto the course they wanted, the university may still have offered something called an “unconditional course change”: offering that student a place on a different course.
“That will again show in Track,” says Derrick. “The student has got that offer and they can think about whether they want to accept it or not, alongside also thinking about whether there’s something else out there for them in clearing. There are many thousands of courses available in clearing and those are all available on Ucas.com and you can search through them for all those different subjects.”
This year, Ucas is also providing a new service called “clearing plus” for students who are unsuccessful with their applications, he adds.“It takes information we know about the student, it takes information we know about the university and the courses they’ve got available in clearing and marries the two up and suggests to students some courses that they may not have previously considered, but which they would be a really good and suitable match for,” Derrick explains.
What if a student has achieved higher than they were expecting to?
Every year, some students end up achieving higher grades than they needed for their firm choice offer, and this year will be no exception.
However, Derrick’s advice here is that students should not be too hasty to discard their firm choice offer, and that teachers should remind them to think carefully about why they chose that university in the first place.
“I think my first bit of advice to teachers and advisers who are talking to students in that position is that the student has obviously spent a good nine months of their life probably considering going to that university and considering taking up that course, and that course could still be a really excellent match for that student - teaching, location, all of those factors. The student really should think about whether they still want to stick with that,” he says.
If, after talking to the student, it seems that they don’t feel the course was quite right for them anyway, or they really feel they have sold themselves short, teachers can suggest getting in touch with the first choice university to see if they have another course that has slightly higher requirements.
“They may have, let’s say, an extended four-year course or something like an undergraduate masters they could switch that person on to. Or sometimes the requirements for, say, business management might be a bit lower than for accounting and business, so they may have another course that you might be really suitable for,” Derrick says.
After all this, if the student really wants to switch provider, then they are free to do so. Derrick recommends that teachers direct these students towards clearing.
“Clearing’s not just for students who haven’t done as well as they thought they would have done - it’s available for absolutely everybody. And if a student wants to release themselves then they can go into Track and decline their place and then go ahead and use clearing,” he says.
“But do consider the implications of that, because there are often other things that go with it, about accommodation and travel time and all that kind of stuff to consider.”
If a student is worried that they won’t be able to have the university experience they were hoping for this year as a result of measures in place around coronavirus, are they able to defer?
Deferral is still an option this year, just as in previous years. Students considering deferring should contact their university to talk about this, says Derrick.
Providers are already updating their websites with information about their policy on deferrals, and on how things will work in the new academic year - whether they will be teaching remotely, teaching in bubbles, and so on.
“Admissions teams are really keen to hear from students about their concerns and happy to answer questions about how they’re going to get started and how they’re going to have a great experience,” says Derrick.
But, he points out, just because deferral is possible, that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily the best thing for teachers to advise students to do.
“Some of my personal advice to students might be that if you’re going to wait for a quote-unquote ‘normal’ time, ‘normal’ university experience, then you might be waiting quite a while,” he says.
“We’re all living and breathing and moving through this situation and finding our way together as a community and I still think that you can have a really great educational experience, but it might be slightly different to the people who have gone before you. But then again, that’s probably the same for absolutely anyone going to university in any given year - it’s always slightly different from the year before.”
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