Seventeen members of the Russell Group of universities, generally considered to be the more selective universities in the UK, were still looking for 2022 students for some courses in Clearing.

Imperial, Kings, UCL, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol and Liverpool were not currently advertising 2022 courses in Clearing – with St Andrews’ in Scotland and St Mary’s College in Northern Ireland the only other traditional universities established before 1992 who do not have 2022 courses still available.

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We’ve gone through every well known provider (all the ones that submit student data to HESA) and recorded how many courses they were offering in UCAS Clearing the afternoon before JCQ results day.

Providers get A level results a few days before students do – meaning that whether or not a given course is available for clearing entry the day before can be an indicator as to whether or not the course has been filled by applicants placed through the firm route. It’s not a perfect indication (not all providers update their clearing information the day beforehand, some applicants may self-release) but it is interesting enough to take a look at.

Those marked as not being in Clearing are either

• Shown on a UCAS search as not having courses available
• Are not shown on a UCAS search and do not mention clearing on their main webpage.

Those unmarked are not on the main UCAS search, but we are not sure whether they will be attempting to attract students during the Clearing period. For most purposes they could be considered as not participating in Clearing, but we like to be sure.

On that note we should also be clear that some universities may not have updated their data on UCAS (even though they are technically required to when a course is no longer available).

Being in Clearing is not a negative for a provider, any more than it is for a student. It’s just another way to bring the right applicants and the right providers together. There’s been a lot of press recently about courses not being available and Clearing being especially brutal this year – what we’re trying to show here is that there are a lot of great courses still out there.

(Wonkhe did this last year too if you wanted to compare)

Edit: 18/08 – I’ve changed the title to stop people being silly.