If you’ve already applied through UCAS and are holding offers with your firm and insurance choice universities, do keep Adjustment in mind.

If you do better than expected in your exams and meet and exceed the conditions of your firm choice, ‘Adjustment’ offers you the opportunity to reconsider where and what to study.

If on A-level results day you find yourself in this position, you will have the opportunity to register on Track by clicking the ‘Register for Adjustment’ button on the choices screen in Track. It is really important that you register through UCAS to use Adjustment, so that any universities you contact can view your application. The great part is you will still hold onto your firm offer whilst you shop around, so even if you try Adjustment and don’t find anything, you’ll still keep the course you gained on results day…it’s a win win situation! You will only loose your UF choice when you confirm that you’d like to go elsewhere and the new University/College add themselves to your UCAS application.

Unlike Clearing, UCAS doesn’t publish a list of courses available through Adjustment, so you will need to check out university websites to see which of their courses are in or out of Adjustment. Don’t let this put you off though; you may stumble across a gem!

If you are given an offer over the phone and you’d like to accept (remember you can only accept one), just let that university know and your UCAS Track screen will be updated with the new choice. If not then you can keep on looking, or once your Adjustment time limit is up you’ll just keep your original place.

Here’s the small print, Adjustment is available from the 14-31 August and you only have five 24 hour periods (including weekends) within this time to use it, starting from when your Conditional Firm (CF) offer changes to Unconditional Firm (UF), or on A-level publication day – whichever is the latter. If your offer goes UF less than five days before 31 August you’ll only have whatever time is left between then and 31 August.

For more information you can download the BU Adjustment toolkit here.