A recent report by UCAS said that nearly half of the applicants in 2019 missed their A level predictions by three or more grades. Whether you did better or worse (or much worse) than you expected, the first thing to remember is that you are not alone. All over the country, there will be other people experiencing the same emotions you are. That might be cold comfort, but you can be reassured that colleges, training providers and universities are all preparing to offer advice on what to do next. Although this might be the first time you have faced this uncertainty, it won’t be the first time for your teachers, careers advisors or recruitment teams; they will be able to help. The most important thing is not to panic and be flustered into a decision that might not quite suit. You are likely to have at least a couple of weeks to evaluate your options before anything has to be decided.

Step One

To a large extent, what you were hoping to do next will influence what you should do when you get your results. In all cases, it’s worth going into school or college to have a chat with your tutor and/or a careers adviser. If your results have been lower than expected, they should be able to offer advice on whether there is an appeals process, for example, and if that is something they would support. If you’ve achieved better than expected, they could also advise on making applications to different college or university courses your predicted grades might not have made possible.

Results better than expected

Doing better than you or your teachers predicted is a fantastic achievement – well done! Results are very rarely downgraded after the event so you can be confident your grade received reflects your ability. For many people, doing better might not actually change anything in terms of what their next steps will be. You picked the college course, degree or apprenticeship that you think will be right for you so why should higher grades change that? However, higher grades do give you the chance to reflect on whether other doors might now be open to you. If it’s your A Levels, you might decide to go through the UCAS Clearing process to see if different courses have space or even take a gap year and apply through the full UCAS process to those courses next year instead. If it’s your GCSE results, similarly, different choices at college or sixth form might be an option, so talk to them and other colleges about your great results. Don’t jump into a potentially more challenging course just because you can! Remember why you made your original choice and check if it will still suit you, your future ambitions and your learning style the best.

Results worse than expected

If you didn’t do as well as you hoped, you will need to do a couple of things at the same time. Firstly, as we’ve already said in Step One, check what your school or college think, whether they can support an appeal, offer resits or advice on other opportunities. You should also start a conversation with the college, sixth form or university you had planned to go to next. Although it is likely that with poor results you won’t be able to take up the place you had hoped, don’t automatically assume that. Whether they have room and are able to take you will depend on whether all the other people they made offers to achieved their grades too, so you just never know. If they can’t, they may well also know of other courses within their institution which are under-subscribed that you might be interested in taking up instead; it is always worth asking. Finally, it’s not too late to make a late application. The UCAS Clearing process is open until mid October, as students start and settle into courses, so you could still get to uni this year. Visit the UCAS website or search ‘UCAS Clearing’ to find out more. Equally, FE and sixth-form colleges will usually consider late applications until around 5 or 6 weeks after a course has started if they have room and before you’ve missed too much. It’s also worth looking at institutions and courses you perhaps hadn’t considered before.

Going into an Apprenticeship

If your planned next step was into an Apprenticeship and you already have that job offer, the good news is that lower results than you hoped might not be the end of the world. By the time you’ve received your results, it’s likely that your future employer has completed their recruitment process; you’ve been through assessment centres, they’ve interviewed you and decided you were the best candidate for the job. Even if they made you a provisional offer, perhaps dependent on a Maths or English grade, training providers will offer qualifications you can take alongside your Apprenticeship to ‘top up’ a poor result. In the first instance, talk to the training provider who will be running the Apprenticeship and seek their advice. They may well be willing to make the case to your future employer for you and are likely to have alternate employers looking to recruit if they can’t persuade them. If you were thinking about an Apprenticeship, but don’t have an offer yet, it’s time to look at your plan B. Although employers do recruit throughout the year, not just in September, you will need to demonstrate that you are doing something worthwhile with your time until the right Apprenticeship comes along.

Your plan B may well have been a place at college so it’s worth taking that up. If your grades were lower than expected, and in a subject that will be important to your Apprenticeship, particularly Maths and English, it will be very helpful to look at an early resit in that subject, to give yourself the best chance in the competition for apprenticeship places.

BTEC and vocational qualification results

Although many vocational qualifications are beginning to include exam-style assessments, very few of them actually focus on one final exam to decide your result. For many practical or vocational qualifications, including Apprenticeships and even the new T Level qualifications in England, your final result reflects your collated score over a number of projects, tests and assignments. This should mean you start to build a fairly clear idea of how you will do as the course progresses – and means you have time to do something about it if you’re not on track! It does also mean you are less likely to be in the ‘results turmoil’ that some of your friends might experience.

And finally…

It might be hard to believe in the moment, but your exam results are not make or break for the rest of your life. There are lots of people who’s plans didn’t go to plan but who look back and realise that it taught them resilience, made them work harder or helped them consider a career path they hadn’t even thought of before. So, try to maintain a sense of perspective and remember the old saying: if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!