Trauma and joy that A-Levels can bring

Everywhere I look at the moment there are adverts for universities, writes blogger Dan Wainwright.

Ever since Tony Blair turned students into customers scores of higher learning centres have been competing for their parents cash, promising the life they always wanted.

On Thursday the A-Level results are due out and once again there will be experts claiming standards have slipped because so many have scored top marks while others complain about the psychological harm exams cause young people.

Not getting the A-Level results you want must be one of the most traumatic experiences of a young person’s life, especially if it means you don’t get into the university you wanted.

I remember being one grade shy of the course I wanted to study and joining the dreaded queue on the phone to Lancaster University to ask whether I could still get in.

Fortunately they were prepared to accept me on the strength of a good general studies mark and plenty of extra-curricular activities (not sport though, it really wasn’t my thing).

For others the A-Level results will mean they have to enter a process called “clearing”.

The name itself implies a kind of mad scrum with a broom to get rid of all the unwanted bits of debris, the leftovers of youth, the scurf of the sixth form.

It’s a horrible name for a horrible ordeal. It is where students essentially take whatever’s left at universities they hadn’t planned to go to and within a month they head off into the unknown, the apron strings severed.

I find it utterly unthinkable that when sixth formers have spent the best part of two years planning their next step they can make the decision about where to go within a matter of hours.

The rest of this blog is really a piece of advice for young people about to get their results. University was one of the best times of my life, there’s no question that wherever you end up you’ll have a great time growing up.

But you must accept that more and more people are going to university and your undergraduate degree is going to become devalued.

You will therefore have to add to it with a healthy mix of good grades, plenty of useful out-of-hours activities, such as sport, debating or writing the student newspaper.

Where you go is important because you need to find out what reputation the course you are going to be studying has. It’s no use picking a university in the top half of the Times league table if the course you want is its weakest link.

In the end, if you can’t make an informed decision during the clearing process, take a year off.

Work, travel if you want to. But most of all take stock, plan your studies because those three years will define the path you take for the rest of your life. You’ll be paying your loan back for decades. It isn’t all cheap beer and stolen traffic cones.