What next?
Now you have finished, or nearly finished school, you have to think about what you want to do next.
To help you make your decision, we've outlined the options available to you, which will hopefully give you at least some idea of the direction you'd like to head in now you've got your further education under your belt.
Options
Work - look for a job as soon as you've finished your exams
University - continue studying in higher education
Gap year - take a break for 12 months to gain work experience and valuable life skills
Your decision as to which option you pick will depend largely on your results and abilities up till now. If your A-levels are largely good (above a grade C or D) you are likely to achieve the grades needed to get into university.
Remember if you have good results you don't necessarily have to go to university - you may find one of the other options suits you better. See our page on whether to go to university, to help you weigh up the pros and cons of going into higher education.
If you have a particular career in mind, are fed up with school but don't want to start working or just feel some extra skills in a chosen subject would help, you get a job later you may want to consider job training.
This will be some sort of placement when you study for a qualification and work for a company at the same time getting the benefit of real-work experience and getting paid for it too.
This may be a good idea if your results aren't so good but you feel you have skills in certain subjects which you would like to continue with.
If you are really sick of education but have certain interests or skills you may want to go straight into working. Lots of companies have training programs which will help you advance and give you experience without having to do extra learning, you will also earn money straight away.
Check out our section on finding a job, as well as our dedicated jobs section, which offers tips and advice on writing cover letters, CVs and how to give a good job interview.
You can also consider taking a gap year if you feel you need a break but don't want to start working just yet - after all, you may not get another chance in your life to travel round the world, take part in a volunteer project or learn a new language!
A 12 month period is plenty of time to do one or all of these, depending on your particular interests. Check out our gap year section for advice on planning and information on things you can do.
If you feel none of these options really suit you have a look at the my ideas section below or just flick through a few career leaflets at your library to give yourself ideas.
Ideas
You may not have any idea where you want to go next but hopefully you have some ideas of what you would like to do.
You don't need to know exactly - just have a general idea of what subjects interest you. These don't need to be subjects you study at school - they can really be anything.
If you really have no idea you might want to start a list of all the subjects at school and activities outside of it which you enjoy doing. Hopefully you will be good at them as well but that is not the most important thing.
Once you have decided what you might like to do you need to decide how you're going to go about doing it.
This means looking at the section above and deciding what's the best way to get your chosen career. If it requires qualifications university is probably the best option, if it is experience you need then you might want to look at job training.
If you can see no other way of getting into that industry maybe getting a job and working your way up is a good way to go.
The important thing is to talk to people - your friends, your parents, your teachers also look at websites and companies in the fields you are interested in.
All the research you do will give you a better idea of exactly what you might want to do ant will come in useful if you decide to pursue that career or decide to study a related subject.
What if I'm interested in more than one subject?
I still don't know what I want to do
Just from looking at all this, you still may not have a clear idea of what you want to do.
This site mainly caters for those who intend going to university, so if you think you may be interested in this, continue to the university section to find out more.
It doesn't matter too much if you think you are studying the wrong thing for your chosen career - most (with the exception of medicine, nursing, law and a few others) don't require you to have a degree in your chosen field so you may find that your job prospects are not affected by studying a certain course.
Remember there is no point in going to university if you don't enjoy the subject you are studying - so choose carefully.
