Prospective students are increasingly waiting until A-level results day before making a final decision on where to study next, the head of the university admissions service has suggested.
Jo Saxton, Ucas’s chief executive, said applicants are using clearing – which matches applicants to university places yet to be filled – to “exert their choice” once they have their exam grades.
She said the “single largest group” of applicants who used clearing last year was made up of those who decided to decline an existing offer that they had been holding to choose a different course or institution.
Universities have recognised this change and are listing courses on the clearing site to ensure applicants bypassing the normal process have choices, the Ucas chief suggested.
Her comments come as students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are due to receive their A-level results on Thursday and decide whether to attend higher education.
Dr Saxton has said “every kind of course under the sun” is available in clearing.
An analysis by the PA news agency last week found that more top institutions had courses available through clearing in the week before A-level results day than at the same point last year.
Clearing is available to students who do not meet the conditions of their offer on A-level results day, as well as those who did not receive any offers.
But prospective students who have changed their mind about what or where they wish to study, and also those who have applied outside the normal application window, can also use clearing.
Dr Saxton told PA: “Increasingly, students are using clearing to exert their choice.”
In 2023, 21,620 applicants declined their original firm choice and secured a place elsewhere through Ucas clearing, compared with 19,635 in 2022, figures show.
Around 29% of all candidates who were accepted in clearing last summer were applicants who declined a firm offer and then opted for something else through clearing.
Dr Saxton said: “There’s been a long debate in policy about whether admissions should be done post-qualification, and basically what we’re seeing here is that students are increasingly exerting that choice and the system is giving it to them.
“We’ve got a significant group who are choosing to, in effect, make their application and choice post-qualification.”
During a webinar hosted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) think tank on Tuesday, Dr Saxton said university vice-chancellors understand that students are using clearing differently.
She said: “I think that’s partly why we might be seeing some differences on what’s on offer in clearing.
“Particularly those who would prefer a PQA (post-qualification admissions) approach are seeing this as a chance to kind of nudge the system and let students do a PQA for themselves.”
Dr Saxton said around 30,000 courses are currently available in clearing – which is similar to the same point last year.
The Ucas chief said: “As of when I last properly looked at them at the end of last week, there was every kind of course under the sun available from medicine through to psychology, so there is a lot of choice.”
During the webinar, Dr Saxton said the higher education admissions service had shared information with universities of applicants in schools affected by collapse-risk reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) this year.
A report earlier this year called for pupils at schools where teaching has been badly affected by the crumbing concrete crisis to have their exam results lifted by up to 10%.
But a one-off dispensation has not been granted to all pupils in exam years who faced disruption to their learning because of Raac.
Addressing Raac disruption on Tuesday, Dr Saxton said university admissions teams are used to taking a range of factors and evidence into consideration when making offers and confirmation decisions.
She said Raac was an “extreme piece of context” that has affected students and it was “appropriate that admissions teams should be aware of that”.
Last week, Sir Ian Bauckham, Ofqual’s chief regulator, said he was optimistic that universities “will be as flexible as they’re able to be” when deciding whether to accept a student if Raac disruption was set out on their Ucas form.
