The last-minute scramble for university places

At the time of writing, many UK high school students will shortly receive their A-Level results - exam grades that can decide their path into higher education.

For some the results may be surprising - better or worse than expected!

This can result in a last-minute scramble to change pre-selected university courses via a process called “clearing”.

Some might desperately consult university league tables to decide what institution is best?

With this is mind, I recorded a trilogy of videos with experts at the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

Meghan Gray, Philip Moriarty and Mike Merrifield - all three are scientists, and all three have held the post of undergraduate admissions tutor.

The first video with Phil Moriarty deals with the issue of failure, and Phil recounts his own experience at university when a passion for music resulted in failing his third year of university.

Next we take a look at university league tables - and how the whole system might be flawed.

And finally we discuss the clearing system - that mad scramble for last-minute places at university.

For those who can’t get enough, there’s also some extra footage that did not get used above but I thought was worth publishing.

And here’s a video from 11 years ago, with Mike discussing university applications.

We endeavoured to make these videos as wide-ranging and useful as possible - NOT a promotional thing for the University of Nottingham.

However, here’s the University of Nottingham’s clearing webpage if you fancy a last-minute application. ;)

And here’s the webpage for the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

Oh, and here’s our Sixty Symbols YouTube channel and the Deep Sky Videos YouTube channel.