Let’s be frank. If you get AAB in your A-level results tomorrow and your university offer is for three As – or worse, if you haven’t secured a place at all yet – things do not look good. Leading research universities have all wedged their doors firmly shut. This year was hugely competitive with great heaps of top grade applicants to choose from (that, of course, is another story). And they are determined not to take any of the 10,000 extra unfunded places thrust at them by a Government desperate to quell the rising tide of Parent Fury. Some modern universities will still enter Clearing. But it will be a fleeting and messy telephone bun-fight – for a pitifully small plateful of buns. No, things do not look good. In Friday’s papers, rather than the usual whooping blonde teenage girls clutching their results letters and each other, expect pictures of distraught 18 year-olds facing the dole queue, and tales of parents who have been on the phone begging for ten hours and now realise their sulky teenager will not be leaving home after all.
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