UCAS Extra and Clearing, Student Finance, and the truth about prestige.
😊 Welcome
This week we take a look at UCAS Extra and Clearing, both of which could be really important options for you if things don’t go quite as you expect.
We also take a first look at university funding for UK students.
And we hear about prestige and how it can warp your beliefs.
✍️ UCAS Extra and Clearing: A failsafe for the unexpected
Sometimes, the UCAS system might seem a bit clunky and a bit restrictive, and for many students it seems a bit complicated. Believe it or not, it’s been operating in broadly the same way for 60 years, gradually moving from a paper-based system through to the online process we see today.
But in the main, it seems to work for most people, with some 384,000 students ending up at their firm or insurance choices last year.
Yet each year, there are a whole bunch of students who the main process doesn’t quite work properly for.
That’s where UCAS Extra and Clearing come in; to provide you with a failsafe for when the unexpected happens. In fact, last year just over 5,000 students found their course through UCAS Extra, and a massive 75,000 secured their place through Clearing.
You might not plan on using either of these, but trust me, it's well worth spending the next five minutes reading all about them, so that you have that failsafe ready, should you need it!
💡 Did You Know?
Applications for university funding for UK students starting this year are expected to open at the end of March.
But now is the time to start learning and understanding how it will all work for you.
There are separate systems for students from each part of the UK, so finding a single source of information is difficult.
You'll need to persevere to find all the information that is relevant to you, but the best starting point I've found is in The Student Room: Uni Guide.
Do have a look!
How student finance actually works
📢 Quote of the week
“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.
It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.”
Paul Graham
Entrepreneur and venture capitalist
Whether you are drawing up your initial university shortlist, or making your final choice, ask yourself this:
Is the most prestigious choice necessarily the best choice for you? Are you choosing it because you actually like it, or is it really because you think you are supposed to like it?
Thanks for reading!
Jonathan
🎯 In case you missed it
📅 Next week
Coming up next week: Why are some universities so ridiculously hard to get into?
