This week's reflections
Thursday 13th August. Results are released from 8am, your UCAS Hub updates from around the same time and Clearing choices can be added from 1pm. Whatever is in the envelope, the grade is information about how a set of papers went in a handful of exams in May and June. That is all it is. It is feedback and feedback is only worth anything if you do something with it.
On my mind this week
I have marked these papers. When you sit on the examiner’s side of it, a grade stops looking like a judgement on a person and starts looking like what it is, which is an arithmetic total of a lot of small decisions made under time pressure. Two students on the same grade can have got there in completely different ways and the way they got there tells you far more about what to do next than the letter does.
So ask for the breakdown. Your school can request the marks for each paper from the exam board and if you are appealing, resitting or simply want to know, that breakdown is where the answer is. A student who lost the same fifteen marks across three papers has a fixable problem with one skill. A student who lost marks evenly across everything has a different problem entirely.
The other thing worth saying is that Thursday feels enormous and it is a day, not a life. Some of what happens on it has deadlines attached, which is why it is worth knowing the process before you go in. Most of the rest can wait until Friday when everyone has slept.
What to do on Thursday
Before Thursday, have your UCAS login details and Personal ID somewhere you can find them, your phone charged, the phone numbers of your firm and insurance universities written down and a short list of alternative courses you would be happy with. Go in person if your school offers it. If it goes wrong, the people who can help you fastest are standing in that hall.
If it goes well. Accept, then sort the practical things whilst everyone else is celebrating! Accommodation, finances for university etc.
If it doesn’t. Check the UCAS Hub before you draw any conclusions, because universities often confirm students who narrowly miss their grades and you may already be in without knowing it. If you are not, ring your firm choice yourself. They may hold your place, offer you a different course or tell you no, and any of those is better than not knowing. Clearing opens to you from 1pm and stays open until 19th October, so there is more time than the panic suggests. The Exam Results Helpline on 0800 100 900 is free and staffed by careers advisers who do this all week.
If a grade looks genuinely out of line with everything else you have done, speak to your exams officer on Thursday itself. Review of marking deadlines are tight and grades can go down as well as up, so it is a decision to make with your teachers and the mark breakdown in front of you, not on a feeling.
For parents
Your job on Thursday is not to fix it. It is to be the voice of reason.
The students who recover well from a disappointing results day are almost always the ones whose parents treated the grade as information rather than as a character reference.
Quote of the week
