King’s College London to deny Clearing to this year’s A-Level students

King’s College London (KCL) has stated that it will not be offering places through Clearing or Adjustment to 2021 applicants, despite having done so in previous years.

On August 6, 2021, four days before A-Level results day, KCL announced it would not make Clearing spaces available via posts on their “lifeatkings” Instagram account, Twitter account, and an statement on its official website.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSPLmnNjiEk/

In a comment on its Instagram post, the university’s administration explained their decision by saying: “we’ve been able to fill the required places on all our undergraduate courses for 2021 entry. Therefore we will not be entering Clearing & Adjustment this year.”

KCL is not the only Russell Group university to have denied students the possibility of Clearing before results day this year. Both the University of Leeds and the University of Edinburgh have also announced on their websites that they do not have any vacancies for Clearing.

According to UCAS, by June 30, 2021, there had been 682,010 applicants and 2,955,990 applications to universities across the UK, a further increase from the already staggering increases seen in 2020. The development also stands in contrast to reports in 2018 that 100 KCL courses had vacancies before the announcement of A-Level results.

Roar has reached out to KCL for a comment on this decision but has not yet received a response. This article will be updated as we receive further information.

Update: September 9 2021

In response to a Freedom of Information request from Roar, the university gave the following statement: “King’s did not reduce the number of undergraduate places for the 2021/22 academic year. However, the excellent exam results achieved by our prospective students meant that we were able to fill all of our undergraduate places this year, and so decided not to enter clearing and adjustment.”

The statistics given to Roar in response to this FOI request, which show the number of students who obtained their places at KCL through Clearing in the 2020/2021 cycle, are not exact as they have been inflated by the university’s use of the Clearing system to process applications that were reinstated after the changes made to A-Level grading in 2020. However, in the 2019/2020 cycle 645 students obtained their places at KCL via clearing.