Black Mark on UCAS File Before Clearing?

[CowTown]

Someone mentioned to me that DC shouldn’t put courses they are at risk of not getting an offer for. Their reasoning is that if DC is rejected at this stage, they will have a black mark from that particular uni department on their UCAS file, and will have problems getting through clearing there. Their advice is that if DC is under the required grades, they shouldn’t put the course on their application, because if the course goes into clearing with lower grades (which it historically does), they’ll be able to get in through clearing on results day if they don’t have this black mark on their record. That if they were initially rejected, the uni will say no at the clearing stage.

Is there any truth to this?

I have never heard this. My impression this year was that Unis were scrabbling to fill courses through Clearing and so it seems unlikely to me. However it seems unwise to put a course down if your predictions don’t meet the entry requirements anyway - seems a waste of a choice??

I’ve never heard of this - sounds a bit conspiracy theory to me

There was a big discrepancy between the grades required on the website versus clearing grades in 2026 (which I know aren’t a guarantee)

1. ABB required, CCC clearing
2. AAB required, BBC clearing
3. AAB required, BCC clearing
4. AAB required, BBC clearing
5. BBB required, CCD clearing
6. ABB required, CCC clearing
7. ABB required, CCD clearing

DD is awaiting mock results, so predicted grades are still in limbo, but could very well be in a BBB or BBC predicted situation. Should they really only apply to choice 5?

Who is this 'someone'?

Universities make pragmatic decisions.

Why on earth would they turn down a young person who was already interested in attending their institution?

They shouldn't waste their choices on universities they will get rejected from.

Another parent (not interested in the same courses that my DC is, so I don’t think there’s anything sinister going on here).

Yes, my initial thought was that if a student is super keen on your uni, that can only be a good thing?

Agreed. But it's ok to have 1 or 2 aspirational choices that they may or may not get rejected by.

Yes but what is their professional experience in this area?

At what point do the mid-tier universities reject? Do they only offer to the pupils who are predicted the exact grades? Is an ABB course which was in clearing last year at CCD not going to offer a conditional place of ABB to a predicted BBB student?

There's no UCAS mechanism that works like that. A rejection is a decision on that application, not a flag that follows the applicant into Clearing. In Clearing the university looks at the same application again (personal statement, reference, and now actual grades), and if the course has places at the grades your DC got, an earlier rejection doesn't stop them making an offer. Admissions tutors can still decide either way, so if it matters, ring the department on results day and say plainly that it was a course they really wanted.

The more useful question is the one concertinacornflake and tardive are getting at, which is how to spend five choices. A few things that help.

The 2026 Clearing grades you've listed are a snapshot of one year. A course that went into Clearing at CCC one year can be full on results day the next, and the most popular courses often never appear in Clearing at all. Planning to get in through Clearing means relying on a vacancy that may not exist.

Many universities publish a typical offer but will make offers to applicants predicted a grade or so below it, especially where contextual offers apply. The way to find out is to read each course page for wording on contextual or reduced offers, or email admissions and ask directly. How they answer also tells you something about how they treat applicants.

A common spread is one or two aspirational choices (as tardive says), two around the predicted grades and one comfortably below. That way a rejection from an ambitious choice costs one slot rather than the whole application.

If all five come back without an offer, UCAS Extra lets an applicant add further choices one at a time before Clearing opens, so it isn't five strikes and out.

And if results day goes badly, a year out to reapply with grades in hand is a real option rather than a failure. Applying with achieved grades changes which courses are realistic, and a year spent working or volunteering gives them something concrete to write about in the new personal statement.

Y13 mocks are often a poor guide either way, so it may be worth waiting for the school's predicted grades before narrowing the list.

I've never heard of this but a friend's son only got one offer from his insurance choice and was able to get into his preferred choice - who had not given him an offer - via clearing. It was a mystery why he didn't get other offers as his predicted were good and he achieved them.

It doesn’t work that way. Universities make the decisions individually not via some UCAS blacklist system.

I don’t know anything about a black mark, but if this was the case, why would students be advised to put an aspirational choice on the UCAS form?
As far as understand the aspirational choice is for a course that might be a grade higher than the predictions?
My child contacted Birmingham Uni to ask about a course with AAA entry requirements. DC’s predicted grades are AAA. The uni replied that they would more than likely make an offer of AAA so to apply. The course went into clearing last year with grades AAB. With the drop in international students they are desperate to get bums on seats.

They can only make so many offers. It may be that he applied late and they’d made all their offers but then an unexpected amount of students went elsewhere.

Entry grades are usually the lowest grades a uni will take most candidates in on, there will be exceptions to this but they need to know that a student can keep up with the workload at a particular standard once they get to uni.

Someone with predicted grades of BBB I would advise them to apply to one or two maximum with ABB, two or three at BBB and then one at BBC. This obviously depends on what unis are offering these grades and if they want to go there.

The whole system is a guess by the uni, they offer to many, some accept, some they are a firm for, some they are an insurance for. It is a legally binding contract, you get X grades you are in. This is why there are issues every year with housing all the students and why some courses end up in clearing. Some courses have spaces and never end up in clearing.

A levels exams are just a 2 hour snapshot of how a child performs over 2 or 3 days. What the predicted grades are supposed to reflect is their day to day classroom standard, their homework, their end of topic tests, their year 12 exams and their general overall attitude to work. That is why some unis will take in some students who get lower A level grades than offered. The personal statement should also reflect their interest in their subject, what are they doing beyond the classroom?

I do not believe there is a black mark against anyone applying to courses. If a student is predicted BBB then the school will strongly advise them not to apply to a course that needs Astar AA.

@Denim4ever You can be predicted 3 A stars, achieve 3 A stars and still get rejected from universities. There are just too many applications for the course if it is oversubscribed, ie 3000 applicants for 220 places. As above, it is a guess as to how many applicants will achieve their grades.

The stars disappeared from my post.
it should be A star AA for the published course requirements.

I can only tell you how I operate as a Programme Leader at a mid tier university who does all the screening for my programme. Which is a popular course btw, I get over 10x the number of applicants as places. It's also slightly complicated by the fact we have to interview anyone we shortlist.

I would certainly offer an interview to someone predicted under our UCAS tariff if their personal statement was good. Because on results day they will either make it or they won't. We have also been in clearing for the last 2 years but previously have never been in clearing. If they performed well at interview they'd be offered a place.

I can not see what other courses they have applied for and I can't see if they have been accepted or rejected elsewhere. So have no idea how a black list can be a thing.

No he was an early applicant and got an interview in Oxford. Durham was where he ended up.

DS was also an early applicant, didn't get Oxford interview. Got offers from everywhere, Durham included.

The only difference was that friend's son was at independent school and DS was at local sixth form.

Thanks. All very helpful. As I say, these are mid-tier universities, and despite the AAB or ABB requested, when you look at the UCAS
page for each course, the average grades from 2023-2025 are BBC, BBB, BCC, etc. Between this data and the 2026 data, I want to encourage my DC to follow their dreams and apply, rather than apply to courses at unis that they don’t want to go to. But am I leading them astray? I’m a very data driven person and am struggling to understand the misalignment between the advertised data and the 2023-2025 data + the 2026 clearing data. This is my first DC, so trying to get my head round it all, and was asking myself whether it was like a car dealership—there is the sticker price in the window, but nobody really pays that price? I do understand that the top-tier unis (which my DC isn’t interested in) ask for, and get, these grades.

That's actually what I'm telling you 🤷‍♀️

DH was in charge of admissions for a decade at his University dept before he became head of department at a top 10 University. I read your opening post word for word. His response was ‘that’s bollocks’. I also assisted with admissions or the poisoned chalice as it was known in my dept.

Universities can’t see other Universities decisions until they have made their own decisions, by then it’s too late to change anything.

The advice not to waste places on the application on courses they realistically will never get the grades for is sound, but the black mark thing is nothing I have ever heard before. If there is a course your DD would like and it needs higher grades than you realistically think she’ll get - but later astounds everyone and does get them - you can often contact that uni at clearing stage and get a place then? In which case you reject the confirmed offer in their UCAS profile and do a clearing application. But the usual process is to opt for one ‘aspirational’ offer as the preferred and a realistic one as the back up.

We ended up going through clearing as DS missed a grade by 2 bloody marks on one paper - went through clearing and ended up on a course he had somehow missed that is much better than the ones he’d applied for (though not at a RG uni, which may be why it was missed). He had [fab] accommodation sorted within 3 days and is incredibly happy and hoping to have a placement at CERN and overseas in y3 - all the same stuff the RG courses offered. I fear they/we overthink this hugely.

Thanks for your insight. She means a black list for the individual uni—that if you rejected a student at the initial application stage, if they then come back to you at clearing, that you will give them an automatic rejection because you rejected them at the first stage.

She means that an individual university will blacklist a student. Student applies to Wessex University, and gets a rejection. That student later applies to Wessex University through clearing, but it is an automatic “no” because Wessex University already rejected that student previously.

She can hedge her bets possibly and put either 1 or 2 as first choice, either 3 or 4 as second choice, and 5&7 as backup. Then in clearing if she meets clearing grades there will be several choices on her list that she hasn't previously applied for. I've had some dealings with university admissions departments and have seen no evidence of any such policy - they are mostly just desperate to get their courses filled and couldn't give a hoot about the exact circumstances of any given clearing candidate who meets their clearing criteria, so she shouldn't be put off from asking the higher choice unis that she applied to if she's rejected. However an ABB required uni isn't going to automatically reject someone with BBB predictions unless they can completely fill their course with AAB predicted applicants - they will just make their ABB offer.