Student & Graduate Stories

Guest blog by Aaliyah Watson, BSc (Hons) Marketing

When I first got my results and realised I’d missed the grades for my first choice university by one grade, I honestly had no idea what to do.

It felt like everything I had planned for months had suddenly disappeared overnight. Everyone around me seemed to know exactly where they were going, while I was stuck refreshing Clearing pages and panicking about my future.

The weird thing is, I had never really thought about Clearing before. In my head, it felt like a “backup option” that nobody actually wanted to go through. I remember feeling disappointed, stressed, and honestly embarrassed at first because I kept thinking about how close I was. Missing my offer by one grade felt frustrating because I knew how hard I had worked.

I did have a second choice university, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I didn’t actually want to go there just because it was the safe option. If I was going to spend the next few years somewhere, I wanted it to genuinely feel right for me. That’s when I started properly looking through Clearing, even though I had no clue what I was doing.

Thankfully, that’s how I found Bournemouth University and, I couldn’t be happier that I did.

The whole process ended up being way less scary than I expected. Everyone I spoke to was really helpful and reassuring, which made such a difference because I was so overwhelmed at the time. Once I looked more into the course and the university itself, something just clicked. It suddenly felt exciting again instead of stressful.

Looking back now, I genuinely think missing my first choice was one of those situations that feels awful at the time but actually works out for the best. If I had got the grades, I probably never would have even considered Bournemouth, and I would have missed out on an experience that’s been so right for me.

I think Clearing gets a bad reputation because people see it as “settling,” but for me it ended up opening a door I didn’t even know existed. It taught me that not everything has to go exactly to plan for things to work out. Sometimes the unexpected route ends up being the better one.