Clearing: Ucas tells unplaced students with good A-levels to try again next year

Candidates with top marks told that it is better to wait Disappointed A-level candidates with good grades are being urged to apply again to university next year, despite the rise in tuition fees, while nearly 402,000 applicants have already been accepted on to degree courses. A further 78,000 are awaiting a decision on their applications, including some who narrowly missed out on their offers, and others who are appealing against their grades. Some of these candidates will not be successful, increasing the number of places that may be available in clearing. The total number of students accepted to university this autumn is expected to be the same as last year – about 480,000. There were more than 680,000 applicants to university this year, up by 1% on last year. Mary Curnock Cook , the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), said: “Those people who have good grades and for whatever reason haven’t got an offer, it is absolutely the right thing to do to apply next year with the grades in your pocket. You don’t have the agonising wait till August. You will have an unconditional offer, which you may well have before Christmas.” David Willetts, the minister for universities and science, has suggested there will be about 40,000 places in clearing this year; in 2010, almost 47,000 people got a place through clearing. According to Ucas, there are 29,009 courses offering clearing vacancies, some of which may have more than one place. About 195,000 applicants are eligible for clearing, so far. Ucas said that, based on previous years’ admissions, it expected that aroundabout half of these would be applicants whose results were not strong enough for them to go on to their chosen courses. Usage statistics indicated that interest in Ucas’s clearing vacancy search was “almost identical” to last year. Curnock Cook said: “If there were a significant increase in demand for clearing places you would expect that to show up on the clearing vacancy search data. But what you see is an almost identical pattern.” She suggested that some well-qualified candidates were likely to hold back from clearing and re-apply next year, despite the increase in fees. “I think there is an understanding about clearing – that there don’t tend to be many vacancies in the more selective type of courses, they have filled up their places. “Clearing vacancies and courses are those which are slightly less in demand, or where the university or college is actively recruiting to fill up its places. People know that’s not the best way to get placed.” The Ucas Track website , where candidates confirm places, was forced to shut down temporarily on Thursday morning after a surge in demand. But that shutdown did not affect clearing, which began in the afternoon. The spike in visits to Ucas Track hit 644 a second at its peak and is being attributed to users finding out the site had been “soft-launched” and alerting friends through Facebook and Twitter. More than 250,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland got their their A-level results on Thursday. Private schools dominated the traditional subjects deemed best for entry to the most competitive universities. Under plans being considered by the government, schools could be judged on the numbers of pupils who go on to study at Oxford or Cambridge . The measure was included in a presentation given by the Department for Education (DfE) to local councils last month, the Times Educational Supplement (TES) reported. A spokesman for the said: “We have committed to publishing as much destination data as possible. This will include how many children get to Oxbridge from a school but also all the different universities and FE colleges. “Parents should know how good a school is at getting their children into higher and further education. Alongside the publication of all exam results this kind of data will help parents make informed decisions about where they send their children to school.” Some of the UK’s biggest employers are looking beyond the traditional graduate jobs market and looking to recruit high-achieving school leavers, amid concerns about the impact university tuition fees will have on the quality and social mix of graduates entering the workforce. The UK’s “big four” accountancy firms, which between them recruit several thousand graduates each year, have established degree-equivalent school-leaver training programmes; graduate recruitment experts predict the trend will spread to other industries. Courses typically offer a five-or six-year structured training programme, with applicants requiring about 300 Ucas points, the equivalent of three A-level grade Bs or more, to qualify. Privately, large graduate employers fear that tuition fees will deter brighter students from less affluent backgrounds from going to university, which could in turn impact on their businesses. PricewaterhouseCoopers has run a school-leaver programme since 2008; this year accountancy firm received 1,600 applications for 100 places. A-Level stats 480,000: Total number of new places available in 2011 401,957: Applicants placed in UK universities and colleges by midnight on Thursday (up 7,521 on last year) 78,141: Still awaiting a decision on their original application (including appeals) 195,415: Applicants who have either not received, accepted or met the conditions of their offer and so are eligible for clearing 47,000: Students who got a place through clearing in 2010 (this year’s number is expected to be similar) Additional reporting by Graham Snowdon Clearing Higher education University guide David Willetts Students Tuition fees Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 19, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.