IN THIS funny old time in which we live, not everyone who leaves school or college will have a place for this incoming year.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what is called ‘Clearing’ to see what options are out there.

If you’ve just left school or are a mature student, you still have until October 19 to find a course, though the sooner you act, the better.

‘Clearing’ is the term given to the way universities fill their courses when candidates change their mind or when degree programmes simply don’t quite fill up during the normal turn of events.

Just because a course is on the Clearing list, it doesn’t mean it’s no good – it may just have been unfortunate as increasingly, students are just waiting to see how the dice rolled for them on results day.

Additionally, with so much grade congestion in the A* to B bands of A-Levels and Distinction stars (D*) at BTEC, universities admissions teams admit to it being a bit of a lottery as to who gets offered places.

Clearing is a popular route, and last year more than 73,000 students got a university place this way – a number that keeps rising every year.

First, the basics. To apply for clearing, you have to have already applied through UCAS in the first place.

UCAS is the University Central Admissions Service and they handle 99.9 per cent of university applications.

If you have ‘done’ UCAS, as young people say, then you can apply through Clearing if you didn’t get the grades you needed for your firm or ‘insurance’ choices, you achieved better grades than you expected and want to apply to a different university, you’ve changed your mind about your choice of university or course, or you’ve applied through UCAS but aren’t holding any offers.

If you haven’t already applied, you can still do so, but are entered into Clearing automatically.

There’s also Clearing Plus, another route where UCAS match your interests from your initial application and try to find you somewhere.

So, what do you do first? Armed with your grades, have a look at ‘What Uni’, a kind of ‘Compare the Market’ for available courses.

It’s a good site, but not the only one. but usually it’s hard to beat phoning a university.

The reason for this is that many students are equally as interested in the actual location of where they’re studying, so perhaps phoning a specific university and seeing what’s available ‘live’ is a route I’ve often taken when advising students in the past.

One good example of this is when I once phoned a university on behalf of a student who had just missed getting into Medicine.

It was clear they were keen to offer her anything, even at one stage saying: “Stay on the line, there’s someone about to drop out of Biomedical Sciences, and she can have their place”!

I can’t stress how dynamic it is, and don’t for one second think what’s published is still valid.

When the goose has laid the golden egg – in other words, when you get an offer – sign in to your UCAS Track account, add the Clearing course, and follow the clearly laid-out instructions.

So what’s on offer? At the time of going to press, there’re still a lot of good courses out there.

For example, if you have ABB and want to read English Literature, there are almost 400 courses available from well-ranked downwards.

With similar grades, and if Engineering is your thing, then there are 780 degrees available, including some very tasty ones, such as Bradford’s BEng five-year Chemical Engineering, including a year in industry.

For Civil Engineering, the City University in London has availability on their degree – one of 130 or so vacancies at this stage.

Locally, QUB have still quite a few courses unfilled. Obviously, by the time of publication, this will be different, but currently (as of September 6) there were vacancies in Engineering, Archaeology, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Geography, Mathematics, Planning, Product Design, Software Design and some Physics combinations.

From these areas, there are many sub-specialisms, such as Maths and Statistical Operational Research, Geography with Spanish, and so on.

At Ulster, a quick scan would suggest there are possibilities in a huge range of their courses, too many to list here, but including traditionally oversubscribed degrees in areas such as Accounting and Marketing, Animation, Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, Business Studies with specialisms, Engineering, Computing, English, Environmental Science, Food and Nutrition, Law, Music and Pharmacy, to name but a few.

The bottom line is, there are still hundreds of degree courses available in the province, and with the debacle of the past few years with students being taught online while languishing in their expensive university accommodation, staying at home is something well worth looking at.

If you fancy going down South and haven’t applied in the first place, then look for the vacancies on the CAO website.

In the CAO’s case, I have found it pointless phoning institutes themselves, though others may have more positive experiences.

There aren’t as many vacancies per capita as in the UK, but there are still some, especially in HE Institutes – and remember, CAO don’t use personal statements, so it’s quick to apply.

Also remember Higher Education Institutes in the South are applying for university status and some have already got that status – in other words, by the time of graduation it’s more likely than not you’ll have a university degree.

For example, the old Cork and Kerry Institutes of HE have now merged and become Munster Technological University.

Likewise, Galway, Sligo and Letterkenny’s Institutes of Higher Education have an application in with the Higher Education Authority in Ireland to become the Connacht-Ulster Alliance, and their transformation to become a technological university will begin in 2022.

Sligo, is of course, only a hop, skip and a jump away from Enniskillen, and well worth considering as a destination, and it currently has Clearing vacancies for its BEng in Mechatronic Engineering.

Our own local and brand-new Erne Campus at South West College also has some degree programmes, as well as quite a few Foundation Degrees.

These latter types offer you the option of a ‘top-up’ course to convert it to a degree; another option.

The short answer is, if you’re out on a limb, don’t despair, especially if you are flexible – there are still a lot of empty desks that need to be filled.