Tim Hands, Master of Magdalen College School and chair of the Independent Schools Universities Committee offers advice to university applicants.

Last week, the papers were full of record A-Level results and the new A*grade. At MCS, we were delighted with our students’ outstanding performance; A*-B grades were awarded to 99.4 per cent of the year group; 38 percent of pupils attained an A*, and in some subjects, such as English, that percentage was as high as 73 per cent.

This year everyone feared clearing. There were fewer places available and more people applying. Good grades are the best possible passport into clearing. But better still is to make sure you attain your offer in the first place.

There should not be any hostages to fortune and I am delighted that this year's upper sixth demonstrated so very few of them. For the first time at MCS everyone with an Oxbridge offer — 32 boys in all — attained it. Tremendous.

So well done all those leavers, and good luck to them when they arrive at their destinations this October. There is much for them to look forward to, and deservedly so.

Entrance to university over the last ten years has become a more and more specialised business. It is a singular irony that schemes devised to promote access have generally resulted in dissuading or disadvantaging exactly those applicants which they so laudably seek to encourage. If only one could say that the situation would be better this year. But the map to the minefield is more intricate than ever before.

First, websites. Universities are becoming fonder and fonder of changing their description of what they are looking for, posting it when they please, and alerting no one. That relates to GCSE requirements, for example, and to soft A-Levels which they suddenly decide no longer to acknowledge. Wise schools now advise applicants to print out the relevant parts of university websites on the day they send off their UCAS form.

Next, there is the A* grade. Only six universities acknowledged that they were using it in offers this year. UCAS revealed the actual number doing so was no less than 13. There are bound to be many more using the grade this year. But how many will have made up their minds in the next few weeks, and how will they let applicants know?

What will it cost? This is less black and white than murky Browne. When Lord Browne reports on future fees we may have a better idea. Can students afford a gap year as well? In the past, standard advice, if you are applying for an arts degree, and especially if you have a late birthday, has been to go ahead. For maths and medicine applicants, however, it has usually been the reverse. This year, bucking a recent trend, the Government seems keen to encourage gap years. But this may be only in order to defer the glut of applications, and could be a sign that, for those thinking of deferred entry, no university intends to look at them first time round.

So there is plenty for young people to think about — and not only on the academic front. The wise will be making sure they also enhance their extra-curricular profile. More and more selecting universities are interested, again contrary to recent trend, in selecting those who have more than just the academic to offer, with Durham the most recent to join this category.

This summer we are all looking forward to welcoming the first girls to MCS. They join our sixth form in September. It will be a bigger sixth form, and I am confident, not least on the basis of our GCSE results, that it will be an even more outstanding one. There is lots for them, and for young people everywhere, to be thinking about. It is a constant pleasure to have the privilege of advising them.