Sophia's Clearing success story

My name is Sophia, I studied biomedical science at London Metropolitan University after going through Clearing before I graduated and now I am a medical student at Brighton and Sussex medical school. I chose to go through Clearing because on results day I ended up getting worse grades than I thought i would be getting. I passed, but they were not good enough for my first choice uni and I didn’t really like my second choice. And incidentally, that summer after I had applied to all my other unis I had actually seen London Metropolitan and absolutely fell in love but they were not one of my five choices at the time. So I just had to reapply through Clearing.

As a student that has gone through Clearing one of the biggest highlights would probably be the ability to be able to help others by telling my story in hopes that they can relate or maybe it might inspire them to do something because Clearing is more commonly used than people think. And you never think it’s going to happen to you, but it happens and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, you’re not less of a student because you have to go through Clearing, it’s just something you have to go through and being able to help others, just talk them through what might happen on the day is a great highlight.

The biggest challenges of going through Clearing apart from dealing with all the stress of that actual day is the imposter syndrome that I found came after, throughout my degree. Sometimes I had felt like I didn’t quite have the right to be there compared to my classmates who had actually got the grades to be on that course. And I got through it by reminding myself why I wanted to be there, why I wanted to do the course and what I wanted to achieve at the end of it and you just keep telling yourself that you have a right to be there and you’re not to give up because you’ve worked hard to get there regardless.

My advice for people applying to uni for the first time through Clearing would be to not be afraid, it’s obviously very easy for me to say now in retrospect but stay calm, you know, don’t let your emotions overrun you. And to help with that, you do as much research as you can beforehand. Make a note of the universities you want to call and their numbers and you know email addresses, everything you think you need just make a spreadsheet and just fill it up and that will relieve so much stress on the day.

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