If your plan for next year is university then you’re already submitted your application, right? If not, then get a move on. The UCAS deadline (January 15th) may be the official cut-off, but a lot of places will have been filled already. We know how fab you are, but that doesn’t mean the unis are holding a space specially for you. Get your application in before the end of this month.

The pandemic might have changed your plans about going to university. Perhaps you’ve already deferred for a year or because of everything going on you may have already decided that uni isn’t the right path for you in 2021, but you’ll give it a go in 2022. 

If that’s the case, don’t let your gap year go by, in the blink of an eye, leaving you feeling unfulfilled and still not ready for uni. In days pre-covid (remember those?) a gap year often meant jetting off in a plane with a backpack and spending a couple of months in a new country. However we don’t know when that’s going to be a realistic option. So maybe it's time to think a little closer to home during your gap year.  Here are a few ideas to get started:

Covid casts a long shadow over lives. As we are discovering, the condition can persist for months or, as we may yet discover, possibly years. It also casts a shadow of grief over those who have lost – or will lose – those they love. But even those who, thankfully, have never been infected may yet find their lives have been blighted for years or even decades by this pandemic’s other long-term wasting effects.
​
The labour market has rarely looked worse for young people and emerging from education into a recession can handicap a whole career. At first there are no jobs and, by the time there are, there’s another generation coming into bloom, fresh out of school or university, unwilted by months or years of unemployment.