Results Day

Results day is a pretty nerve racking event. A Level results day this year is the thirteenth of August, and GCSE results day is the week afterwards. Years of hard work and studying ended about a month before with the end of exams and now it’s time to see if that’s going to pay off.

What to expect GCSEs:

It has been a few years since my GCSE results day (which happened to be on my sixteenth birthday). At my school, there were two separate times for year 10 students and year 11 students to collect their results and it is definitely worth checking what time your results will be available for you.

In year 10, results day was fairly simple. Go to the desk, pick up an envelope with your name on it, read the results.

In year 11, things were a little more complicated. As my school was a sixth form as well as a school, those planning on attending the sixth form had to take their results to another part of the school so they could enrol at the sixth form. As I wasn’t staying at my school sixth form, I didn’t have to do this, but I know it involved a very long queue.

I had to enrol at the college I was planning on going to. I was given a time to enrol at and I showed up at college, had a meeting with the man who was going to be my tutor to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind about what I had applied for, then sat with a teacher from each course I had applied for to discuss my enrolment. Because I was a nerd and got the necessary grades, that was straight forwards. If I hadn’t quite gotten the grades needed, that would have been a chance to change the minds of the course teachers and actually get on the course.

What to expect A Levels:

Collecting my AS results was very much like collecting my year 10 results, with one minor difference. In year 10, I continued into year 11 no matter what my results were, I just needed to know how much work I needed to put in in the second year of GCSEs to get the grades I needed. Failing my AS year, or doing poorly in my AS year could have meant having to retake the year.

Collecting the results was pretty simple. Go in, to the desk, get you envelope, open the results. Reenrolment happened in a couple of weeks’ time when I would go through the same process as when I enrolled at college.

A Level results is the biggie. This is the one that will tell you whether you are getting into your chosen university or not.

First of all, I already knew I was in the university when I got to the college. I knew when I was having breakfast that I had gotten the results needed for Southampton University to accept me on their course. UCAS tracking gets your results before you do, and I think it was around eight in the morning that I was able to log on and see that I had an unconditional offer.

So really, collecting my results was a formality for me. Those who weren’t quite lucky enough to get the needed results didn’t have it quite so easy. For a friend who got into his insurance university but not his firm choice, it meant phoning up the firm choice university to see if he could get a spot there instead. For people who didn’t manage to get into any of their choices, it meant sitting with staff from the college and phoning up universities in the hope that they might have a place. Every college and sixth form will have people to go to if you happen to not be in the position you thought you would be in after results. Don’t panic!