When people talk about Clearing, sometimes a lot of negative comments and remarks are made. Clearing wasn’t even mentioned to a lot of people at school, and when completing university forms everyone has in their mind the aim to get the grades they want and get into their number one choice.

But Clearing is a second chance: to those people who may not have made the grade, those who have the aims and goals to go to university, those who aren’t sure about their course and those who have just made the decision to go.

I went to only five open days to look at possible universities, and only focused on the course that I thought was right for me. £27,000 is a lot of money to pay for a course – especially when you are just not sure that it’s the right one.

When results day came around, I logged on to UCAS and had achieved the grades to get into the university I had chosen, but then PANIC, I realised I didn’t want to go to that university anymore and on top of that I didn’t want to do the course I had chosen…now what? I thought that was the end of the road and university was off the cards.

University is a big deal, and I thought I’d missed my chance, I then went into overload searching for a solution. I didn’t want to travel the whole of England to go to a university that wasn’t right for me. Bournemouth is my home town, and I decided that Bournemouth University was the place to go.

Me with my new uni friends!

After what felt like 100 phone calls, I spoke to an advisor who helped me through the whole process and I found that Clearing was not the enemy – it was my chance to follow a better career path. I finally got the offer I wanted from Bournemouth, and to do a course I’ve always been interested in, but never thought I could make the cut for: Law.

Clearing is there to help, not to hinder. Don’t give up if you don’t quite get the results that you were looking for or you want to change courses. I’m so pleased now with my choices and would’ve been a lot worse off if I hadn’t had Clearing and Bournemouth University.

By Scarlett Heritage