Clearing 2025 opened 5th July but no-one has A level results yet ?

[oodlesofpets]

How do Universities know what places they have available if A level results aren't available to them until a day or so before applicants receive their results ? They can't yet know how many have made the required offer grades or not.

Are the places currently showing in clearing just where there is remaining capacity on courses due to not enough applicants to date ? If so, will there be more listings added to clearing once the IB/A Level results are made available to the Unis ?

Some applicants are post a levels (mature applicants)

some applicants have done IB (results either already out or out soon)

IB results come out on 5 July and some popular international qualifications (eg French bac) have already had their results. That's why clearing opens in early July.

Some Scottish students who complete S6 will have already achieved the entry requirements in S5, and have non-conditional offers which they've accepted or rejected.

To clarify:

international places at UK unis and UK places at uk unis are funded completely differently and internationals pay a lot more.

most unis have a cap on how many local students they will take but will take all the internationals they can get.

Yes they’re unis with not enough firm/insurance acceptances so they have vacancies. Once unis have AL results (almost a week before applicants get them) they will
begin to know exactly how many vacancies they have.

lol - most unis really don’t have a cap on home students. In reality we’re desperate…

Universities can make fairly good estimates of their numbers from the offers they have made and historical data. They will know if they have a shortfall.

That confused me too

Then why do some courses say they are open to international students only?

I said most not all. Clearly some lucky buggers are confident they’ll fill their home targets so they’re only open to internationals - much more difficult to predict which of those will actually turn up.

My DD applied in Early Clearing with grades in hand last year.

Its a relaxed process as you just fill out a simple form for each uni and wait to see if they want you. You can apply to as many as you like -once you've decided which one to accept you go through UCAS.

My only regret is not realising how misleading the grade requirements were - after the post A Level clearing offers came out we realised there were many more places she could have looked at. She seems very happy where she ended up though - Aberystwyth.

5th July is early Clearing and only really applies to a small number of students who already have results, and IB students (small cohort)

Universities do not generally have caps on local students. There used to be SNCs or student number controls but not now. A very few courses have genuine caps (Medicine e.g.) and some have practical space limitations, though (specialist lab work or studios).

Universities get results on Fri 8th Aug and Clearing proper opens on the 14th.

As in the requirements ended up being lower?

Yes - in Clearing last year Liverpool offered the course she's doing now at Aber at BCC - which are the grades she had in hand. It never occurred to us that she might get into an RG uni.

But she tells me now that as soon as she looked at Aber and read the course details she felt it was the right place. And I'm not sure she would have liked being somewhere where she felt like everyone had better grades than her.

My dd went through clearing last year after her IB results came out (state school). Her result was much better than she thought so she went to a RG university instead of the one she had firmed originally. It's so blinking far away though!

Hadn’t thought about that. What percentage of international students are no shows?

I would say 10 - 20% of international students didn’t turn up when I was involved in induction on our programme.

In some ways it is not a surprise - when push comes the shove they may find they can no longer lay their hands on the funds. Plus other reasons too. But that must be a real pain for the universities. And more of a financial impact than UK no-shows.

As others have said IB results came out last weekend and AP results have just come out as well.

There are a few other qualifications where the results are already out too.

Scottish universities have caps for Scottish students that are decided by the Scottish government.