Essential Results Day and Clearing Guide for Applicants 

I’m a Durham offer holder – what happens on Results Day?

If you’re holding an offer at Durham and want to know what happens on Results Day, check our dedicated Offer Holder pages for what happens when you get your results.

If you’ve applied to Durham and we haven’t been able to confirm your place on the course you applied for after the publication of results, you may still be considered for a clearing place. Please check out our listings to see what’s available.

If you haven’t applied to Durham, or perhaps applied to us and declined our offer or your grades are better than you expected and you’re interested in one of our vacancies, we’d love to hear from you!

Whatever your reasons for using Clearing, at Durham we’re here to help guide you through the process.

Step 1:  Research

1. You’ll find all the courses we have available in Clearing on our dedicated pages. Make a shortlist of the ones you’re interested in, or if the course you want isn’t available, why not consider an alternative?
2. Make sure you meet our entry requirements. It’s also important that you read about the course modules – is the course right for you?
3. We’re a bit different at Durham – but that’s what makes us distinctive. We’re a collegiate university so if you come to study with us, you’ll become part of our college community. Find out what that means by visiting Our Colleges.

Step 2: Checklist – what you’ll need before you call

1. Make sure you have all the results of your qualifications to hand – including your GCSEs or equivalent. We need to make sure you’ve got the results we need before we can consider you for an offer.
2. Have your UCAS ID handy – you’ll need to give it to the University when asked. If you’ve got a Clearing ID, then that’s useful too – but don’t worry if you haven’t got one when you call.
3. We’ll need all your contact details, including your address, telephone numbers and an email address you can access easily.

Step 3: Call our helpline

1. You can reach our helpline on +44 (0) 800 987 4120 (available from 5 July until 14 August, Monday – Friday from 10am-4pm, and from 15 August 8am-6pm and 16-23 August 9am-5pm)
2. You might need to be patient as we expect lines to be very busy – but please bear with us! You must call yourself – you can’t get anyone to call for you and we won’t be able to speak to anyone but you about your application.
3. When you get through to an adviser tell them your name and what course you’re interested in.  You’ll also need to tell them your results.
4.  If you meet our entry requirements and we have vacancies on the course then we’ll ask you some additional questions to find out more about you.  It’s important you speak slowly and carefully, and listen to what the adviser is saying.
5.  Your details will then be forwarded to our UG Admissions Team who will be making decisions on who we can make offers to.
6. If we’re able to make you an offer we’ll let you know by email.
7. You’ll then need to follow the instructions contained in the email to make a formal application.

Step 4: What happens next?

1. After you’ve referred yourself, Durham will receive a copy of your application from UCAS.
2. We’ll then conduct some basic checks to make sure all of the information you’ve told us is correct – if everything checks out we’ll then send an unconditional offer to UCAS.
3. You don’t need to accept it – UCAS will do this for you automatically.
4. Wait for our offer communications – they’ll tell you what you need to do next and how to apply for accommodation and a place in one of our colleges.
5. If you’ve applied for student finance and your course or institution has changed then you’ll need to let your student finance provider know so that your finance is in place for the start of term.
6. That’s it – you can now look forward to the start of term!

Accommodation offers for Clearing applicants

All students who come to Durham via Clearing will be allocated membership of one of our 16 colleges that accept undergraduate students. 

We will make every endeavour to offer college accommodation to all Clearing candidates, but we cannot guarantee this at this late stage.

If you accept an offer of a place to study at Durham via Clearing, the Accommodation and Allocations Office (AAO) will contact you to let you know if you will be in receipt of an offer of accommodation.  If there is nothing available, the university will support you with finding accommodation.