You don’t have to be a crumbling mess on your results day, you just have to prepare a little

The 13th of August is the AS/A-Level Results Day and one that many 16-18 year-old students across Britain will be waiting for. After an excruciatingly long wait, the A-Level students will get to find out whether they have the right grades to attend their first choice university. The AS-Level students will likewise find out whether they have the right grades to move on to the second year. So, it is a very important day for the youth of Britain.

However, the day before results day is probably scarier than results day itself! It’s all over the news, it’s all over your social media feed, and it’s all you can think of. Some people are very chilled about results day, but that doesn’t mean that they escape awkward conversations about it. Your friends and family will be playing 21 questions with you. What grades do you think you got? Do you think you can still get into university? On a scale of 1 to Nature Valley cereal bar, how much will your life fall apart? Summer is literally over. Condolences to teenagers who have birthdays on Results Day. It can be the best or worst birthday – ever!

If you want to survive the lead-up to results day, follow these five easy steps:

1. Grade Boundaries

This is probably the best or worst thing you can do. On the day before results day, the grade boundaries of each subject are posted online. Low grade boundaries usually increase the chances of a student getting a better grade. Checking grade boundaries can be the best decision because it gives you an idea of how well you’ve done in a particular subject. It is very important to keep calm – checking the grade boundaries may do this. However, it can be the worst decision too because it may give false hope to vulnerable students. Imagine, Biology grade boundaries for example, are low, so you go into school expecting fabulous results, and that was not the case. It actually makes failing feel even worse because there are less reasons to explain that failure.

So, the advice here, is to do what you think will keep you calm.

2. Get Plenty of Sleep

It is really important that a stressed or non-stressed individual obtains plenty of sleep the night before results day. You don’t want to wake up all flustered, nervous and out of control. Be in control, be slow and cautious. Little sleep means you will be tired and very cranky in the morning. Nothing is worse to parents than a cranky child on the morning of results day. More common than admitted, some tired people have opened up their envelope and misread their results. Imagine if your offer to university is AAB and you read AAB on your results slip and you actually got ABB. Many have misread their results, even on national television. Don’t let that be you.

3. Keep Yourself Busy

If you manage to keep yourself busy before results day, you are less likely to stress about it. You may avoid nerves which is great, because nerves aren’t there to make you feel better! Go for a morning jog perhaps – make yourself proud. After that, you can bake a cake, or watch a movie. Maybe even treat yourself to a tournament of FIFA or an afternoon of shopping. Something is better than nothing. Something is better than lying in bed and thinking about results day.

4. UCAS Website

On results day, from 7 am, the UCAS website informs you whether you have received an offer from your university of choice. To those in Year 13 achieving their A-Level results, you may or may not want to do this. The benefit of this is that it gives you an idea of what kind of grades you have. If you have received an offer, then this is great news. If you haven’t, then on your way to sixth form or college, you can start to think of the next steps of what you can do. Keeping calm and thinking logically is so important. You may not be able to do this on the lead-up to results day, but it is still relevant to the time before actually collecting results.

5. Social Media

On the week of results day, social media will be flooded with worried ‘selfies’ and not-so-promising tweets. Of course, there will be the old jokes about one-way flights to your parents’ countries and talks about whether your grades spell out countries like C-U-B-A or music bands like A-B-B-A. More than likely, if you are thinking about results day, it does not help to hear what other people think too. If you know you will panic more, then just stay away from adrenalized friends. Stay away from the WhatsApp group chats – keep to yourself.

Now good luck on your results. Keep calm, think logically and think ahead!

DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.