After what felt like a very long night of no sleep, waking up to UCAS track saying I had not met my conditional offer of a place at my first choice university to study economics was not ideal!

Panic mode quickly set in, and all sorts of things went through my mind. Would I get a place to study the course I want to? Would I even end up going to university this year?

Firstly I needed to go to my college and collect my results in person and find out what I actually did get. This bit was probably the worst part of the day as I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate with all my friends, and just ended up picking up my results and then going home and hitting the phones.

By about 9:30, I was logged into the clearing part of the UCAS website and was frantically searching through the site to find economics places.

Two universities caught my eye – Cardiff and York.

I phoned Cardiff first, and as I met the grade requirements I needed, I was put through to the admissions tutor for economics to have a chat.

At this point I was so nervous as I was truly doubting whether I would get a place at university at all, however, when I was put through to the economics course tutor, he quickly alleviated my worries. He told me that my grades were more than enough to do the course, and he offered me a place.

York also offered me a place, however I decided on choosing Cardiff, as it had everything I wanted from university.

Once I had accepted my offer from Cardiff on UCAS, I started receiving some really useful information from the university, such as course information, term dates, and accommodation, which I was most interested in. I was really impressed by the communication I received from Cardiff, as every question I had was answered!

Clearing students were not guaranteed a place in university accommodation at Cardiff, and after accepting my offer, I really wanted to get accommodation sorted.

After applying for accommodation through the Cardiff SIMS system, I had to wait for what seemed like a very long 10 days before being offered a place in an 11 bedroom university owned house. I was really apprehensive about being put in a house of this size, as I was worried I’d miss out on the fun of being in halls, and I was hoping on having an en-suite too – but as it turned out I had nothing to worry about!

I had quite a few questions about the house I was offered, such as number of bathrooms, kitchen facilities there, etc, and I phoned the university a number of times to ask them questions and the staff were really helpful in answering all my questions.

So now with a place secured, and accommodation sorted, the next step was to actually move to Cardiff ready for the much anticipated fresher’s week.

At this point I was still nervous about what my house might actually be like, but after moving in and meeting my house mates, who were nearly all clearing students themselves, and being very pleasantly surprised by the size of my room the stresses of the past month were soon put to bed and I then went on to have an amazing fresher’s week in a city I never expected to be in!

After fresher’s week, it was time to get down to what I was here for, Economics. I actually found the course content at Cardiff better than what was available at my first choice, and the information and support given by the business school was brilliant!

If I could go back to my second year of college, I would definitely apply to Cardiff and put it as my firm choice, and that isn’t a lie. I really don’t think my first two years here could have been better anywhere else, my course is excellent, the city itself is amazing, and the people I’ve met are even better.

After what felt like a very long night of no sleep, waking up to UCAS track saying I had not met my conditional offer of a place at my first choice university to study economics was not ideal!

Panic mode quickly set in, and all sorts of things went through my mind. Would I get a place to study the course I want to? Would I even end up going to university this year?

Firstly I needed to go to my college and collect my results in person and find out what I actually did get. This bit was probably the worst part of the day as I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate with all my friends, and just ended up picking up my results and then going home and hitting the phones.

By about 9:30, I was logged into the clearing part of the UCAS website and was frantically searching through the site to find economics places.

Two universities caught my eye – Cardiff and York.

I phoned Cardiff first, and as I met the grade requirements I needed, I was put through to the admissions tutor for economics to have a chat.

At this point I was so nervous as I was truly doubting whether I would get a place at university at all, however, when I was put through to the economics course tutor, he quickly alleviated my worries. He told me that my grades were more than enough to do the course, and he offered me a place.

York also offered me a place, however I decided on choosing Cardiff, as it had everything I wanted from university.

Once I had accepted my offer from Cardiff on UCAS, I started receiving some really useful information from the university, such as course information, term dates, and accommodation, which I was most interested in. I was really impressed by the communication I received from Cardiff, as every question I had was answered!

Clearing students were not guaranteed a place in university accommodation at Cardiff, and after accepting my offer, I really wanted to get accommodation sorted.

After applying for accommodation through the Cardiff SIMS system, I had to wait for what seemed like a very long 10 days before being offered a place in an 11 bedroom university owned house. I was really apprehensive about being put in a house of this size, as I was worried I’d miss out on the fun of being in halls, and I was hoping on having an en-suite too – but as it turned out I had nothing to worry about!

I had quite a few questions about the house I was offered, such as number of bathrooms, kitchen facilities there, etc, and I phoned the university a number of times to ask them questions and the staff were really helpful in answering all my questions.

So now with a place secured, and accommodation sorted, the next step was to actually move to Cardiff ready for the much anticipated fresher’s week.

At this point I was still nervous about what my house might actually be like, but after moving in and meeting my house mates, who were nearly all clearing students themselves, and being very pleasantly surprised by the size of my room the stresses of the past month were soon put to bed and I then went on to have an amazing fresher’s week in a city I never expected to be in!

After fresher’s week, it was time to get down to what I was here for, Economics. I actually found the course content at Cardiff better than what was available at my first choice, and the information and support given by the business school was brilliant!

If I could go back to my second year of college, I would definitely apply to Cardiff and put it as my firm choice, and that isn’t a lie. I really don’t think my first two years here could have been better anywhere else, my course is excellent, the city itself is amazing, and the people I’ve met are even better.