Clearing is a stressful time. You haven't gotten in to your first choice, or even your insurance. The whole course of your adult life hangs in the balance. Literally anything could happen - you could end up in Exeter studying chemistry or at Manchester Met reading French & Italian.

Thousands upon thousands of students are sorted over the course of a few hours, not by magic hat, but by a grumpy hungover graduate in a hectic university office.

While clearing is obviously difficult for the many disappointed students whose hopes and dreams have been dashed by their own meagre A-Level efforts, the poor men and women on the other end of the phone have to deal with an unparalleled level of anger, frustration, and downright stupidity. These are their stories:

So to begin, what does the whole day of clearing look like for you? Is it stressful?

It’s literally bedlam. I get in at 7.15am and don't leave until after 6.

You have a screen on the wall that shows the amount of active calls next to the amount of calls waiting and between 8:00-12:00 there are never any fewer than 250 calls waiting.
 
As soon as you hang up, your phone rings and you have to take it.

What kind of things do you have to deal with over the phone?

Well, sometimes applicants are in a kind of purgatory - where they’ve not been rejected by their chosen uni but they haven't been accepted either. Often this is because results are ‘missing’ on the UCAS system, even though the student might have received the results themselves.

This happened last year with a guy who was held at our uni. He rang up asking to be released into Clearing. Now, we're obligated to go through a bit a spiel about how releasing them is a risk because it negates their initial offer. Anyway he asked to be released into Clearing and it went like this:

"Hi, please can you put me in Clearing?”

Me: "Sure. However, it’s important you’re aware that releasing you into Clearing means that there’s no guaran-“

He stopped me there.

“Listen mate. My offer was AAB and I’ve woken up with CDD. Put me in fucking Clearing.”

Fair enough, pal. All the best.

And then of course there’s ‘mitigating circumstances’, which is a fancy way of saying ‘I’ve fucked it massively’. You get all sorts of these. My favourite was a guy who rang up and claimed he had some mitigating evidence. When I enquired further, he revealed he had been suffering from... narcolepsy.

Course you have. Why wait until today instead of telling us at any point over the last 18 months? Have you only just woken up?

“Basically I spent ages trying to get treatment, trying to revise, get my exams done and stuff but I just kept, y’know... falling asleep.”

*facepalm*

I had one just yesterday which was funny purely out of the sheer desperation of it:

“What course are you looking for?”

“Anything, literally anything, I’ll take anything. I’ve got CDE, do you have any courses I could get into?”

Now, I knew full well our minimum requirements are CCC but I didn't want to destroy the guy, so I did the old “hmmmm lets take a look, bear with me one second!” and shuffled some papers.

But yeah, no, we rejected him.

That sounds really taxing would you say it's the worst day of the year in your profession?

I actually quite enjoy it because you can be really nice to the nice applicants and you can be really snide and horrid to all the ratty parents. Oh and please don’t use my name or the uni I work for btw or I will sue you back to the Stone Age.