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Sidra's Clearing story

Sidra went on to study Mechanical Engineering

If you're worried about results day and not sure what it's like to go through Clearing? Find out how it went for Mechanical Engineering student Sidra, who joined Newcastle University through Clearing.

My name is Sidra Ansari and I'm studying Mechanical Engineering.

I think from the beginning of the summer I stressed because obviously we'd just finished our exams.

How did you find waiting for you results? 

I think I just forgot about it because it's so long after you've finished your exams and before you get your results, there's no point in stressing for that long so I just hung out with friends, went on holiday, did everything normal that I normally do in summer.

How was results day?

I honestly did the whole Clearing process on results day rather than beforehand, I didn't email anywhere before, I just wanted to check my grades first.

So, I opened them up and I hadn't got the grades that I needed, the night before I'd already made a list because I'd gone through researching how Clearing works.

I'd already made a list of universities that I wanted to call up on the day itself, so I got my results checked by UCAS as well just to double-check, and then went about sorting it out.

How was making your Clearing call? 

So, I called Newcastle up and I'd explained to them the grades I'd gotten, they just asked 鈥渨hat did you get?' What did you need to get, and what have you got now?鈥�

So, I told them, and they were like...鈥� yeah that's fine, we will look up if we have any space on the course鈥� and then I think it was on the same phone call that they were like 鈥測eah we do have space, so you can just come in鈥� and I was like 'that's great!'

What would be your advice for going through Clearing? 

Keep your head calm in that situation and realise that it's not the end of the world, grades don't define you.

Have you enjoyed your university?

I've made so many friends here just through the course and societies.

I've joined a couple of the engineering societies related to the course and I've made quite a few friends through that or just socials in general and it's just easier - I didn't think it would be this easy to make friends, but it is a lot easier than you think.

So, I think that's probably what I enjoyed most, how easy it was to communicate with people and make friends with them and then hang out with them, and there's so much to do here.

Newcastle never gets boring!