Five ways to make Clearing work for you

See what’s on offer  

While lots of courses will have places available in Clearing, not all will, so make sure you check the lists of vacancies to see what is actually on offer before you start. We publish our Clearing vacancies in July.

Shortlist a few courses of interest to help narrow down your options and give yourself room to change if any of your courses fill up or aren’t suitable for you.

Be ready to sell yourself 

Universities will certainly want to know how you did in your A-levels and BTEC courses, but might ask about GCSEs, your AS-Levels, and other achievements and qualifications to help tutors get an idea of your background and experience while they fit you to the right course. 

Of course, if you’re not coming directly from education, it is important to share all work experience in order to help admissions teams build up an idea of what you can do and which courses will be a good fit for you.  

UWL works closely with industries, providing real-world experience as part of your learning, so there will be lots of ways to match your skills and use your experiences.  

You might also want to mention relevant work experience or volunteer programmes to really build up a picture of what you can do and what areas you’re interested in.

Think about what is best for you 

You’ve probably already had a lot of different suggestions on what you should do next, but now is the time to try to focus on your own career goals.

Think about different universities and courses and try to imagine the next three or four years studying, as well as the possibility of a career in your area of interest. 

You can get a good idea of the UWL campus with our virtual tours, that will help you build up a picture of life on campus and help visualise yourself studying with us.  

Use your time wisely  

Once you start speaking to universities, expect Clearing lines to be busy – especially the closer it gets to A-Level results day in August. It might take a few tries to get through, so make sure once you’re speaking to admissions teams and tutors, you use your time on the phone wisely and get all the information you need. 

This is your chance to speak to course leaders, find out what you’ll be learning and how you’ll benefit on the courses you are looking into. Have a list of questions ready beforehand and visit the University website to see what information is already available. 

The more you know in advance the more confident you can be that you’ve made a great choice.