If you got responses from all of the universities you applied to by 31st March, then Wednesday is a big day for you. It’s deadline day, you see, for responding to those university offers you’re holding. If you haven’t heard back yet, or didn’t until after 31st March, you’ve still got another month or so. Nevertheless, the decision day is looming somewhere for you as well.
Now, while for many people the deadline day isn’t an issue at all because they know exactly where they want to go, and while for others their decision angst is about which offers to take, this blog post is aimed at a different group of people who are stressing over university decision day: the people who’ve started to have second thoughts about going to university at all.
Having perhaps had a nagging doubt about whether university was for them since even before they submitted a UCAS application, the upcoming deadline has now really made these folks start to get cold feet about the prospect of heading off to university.
If you find yourself in this situation, now’s the time to confront it head on rather than dithering and perhaps missing out on what you really want to do, whether that’s go to university or do something else for either a year or more permanently. Here’s what we suggest:
1) Identify the reason you’re having second thoughts
You can’t really make a decision about what you should do if you don’t understand your own doubts. Why are you having them? If it’s because you have a definite idea about something else you’d like to do, then it’s time to seriously weigh up the two options side by side. But if on reflection it seems your university cold feet are perhaps more symptoms of something else (stress about needing to get grades is a classic underlying cause of university decision angst), then it’s important to confront those issues head on. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to see if you really don’t want to go to university or whether your anxiety lies elsewhere.
2) Speak to some people in the know
Once you’ve had a think about what’s causing your university uncertainty, speak to people you know and trust, such as parents, teachers or friends–unless, of course, you feel that they will try to unduly influence you one way or the other rather than helping you to come to a decision that’s right for you. These are the people who’ll be able to give you crucial information about areas like how viable your alternative plans are, or how to deal with other worries related to your future that are unnecessarily putting you off the idea of going to university.
3) Have a look at the course materials again
If your quandary is clearly about whether or not you think the course you’ve applied for is worth doing relative to something else you had in mind, now’s the time to go back to the prospectuses and university websites to see what made you apply for it in the first place. Perhaps you’ve just lost sight of what made it so appealing to you before. Alternatively, it may make you realise your priorities and goals have changed since you put in your UCAS application.
4) Evaluate what your alternatives are
Let’s dust down an old clich that is very apt here: “Look before you leap.” This doesn’t just mean making sure that you’ve got a solid alternative to university planned, but you also know where you’d stand in terms of being able to be accepted to the same course or university again at a later date. At the same time, however, this doesn’t mean you should just go to university if you don’t have a good alternative; if you know that the course you’ve applied for won’t be for you, you should think twice about doing it just because you haven’t thought of an alternative. Rather, you should focus on what your other options could be, so that within the next couple of years you can be heading towards something that you are more interested in doing.