It’s that time of year again; results day looming over us.

Whether you’ll be receiving your GCSE, AS or A Level results, it can be a stressful day, made more stressful if you don’t get the results you expected. By Saaleha Iqbal.

So, here are five tips to help you:

1) The first tip is for before results day: be ready for anything. 

No matter how confident or how you felt after an exam, anything can happen. Especially if you are receiving you’re A Level results and you need to get certain grades for a place at university. A lot of past students will advise you to not be certain about anything – not even your insurance. This will prevent any horrid shocks and panicking on the day. 

2) Okay, so now it is results day. 

You’ve opened the envelope and seen what you got; they aren’t the grades you wanted or needed. Before anything else, react to your results. Cry, scream, shout – do whatever you need to do and get the disappointment out of your system. Talk to someone you trust – a teacher, a friend or a parent. The key thing here is to not bottle up your frustration. Of course, it is impossible to get over your results in a matter of minutes or hours – but you need to get back into a rational state as much as you can. 

3) Once you have reacted to your results, you now need to act, work with what you got.

For GCSEs, if you are going to college, most colleges require 5 GCSEs. If you are looking to get employed, you will need to have passed Maths and English Language (a pass is Grade 4). But, double check with the colleges/work you applied for beforehand what grades they require. If you haven’t met these requirements, talk to your teachers for remarks/resits and for advice on what you should do.  
For A Level, if you haven’t met the grade requirement for your firm choice, check your insurance.  If you haven’t met that either, then consider the possible routes that are available: take a gap year and reapply the following year, go into employment or go through clearing. 
Ensure that you get advice from people you trust since whatever decision you make, it will affect your life. Also, it’s worth saving numbers for clearing on your phone the day before and being aware of how clearing works. 

4) Once you have reacted and acted, it’s worth reflecting on your results. 

Think about why you didn’t get the results you expected. Maybe you started revising too late, brushed over topics or perhaps it was your revision strategy or lack of exam practice. Whatever the reason is, you can’t change what happened, but you can change what you will do next time. Take this as an opportunity to improve and grow. So, for your next set of exams, whether it will be resits, A Level or university exams, do things differently: start revising earlier, get more organised or revise a different way. 

5) The final tip is to relax, rest up.

It’s been a long and emotional day so go out for a meal, do something you like to do with your family or friends. And be ready to face whatever it is you must do to rectify your results.