Didn’t Get the Exam Results You Wanted? What to Do Next

You open your exam results and your stomach drops.

Maybe you missed the grade you needed. Maybe you failed a subject you expected to pass. Maybe your friends are messaging each other about how well they did while you’re trying to work out how you’re going to tell your mum and dad.

It feels horrible.

I know because I’ve been there.

I had generally done pretty well at school, but Higher Maths was different. I didn’t get the result I wanted, and because maths was important for the route I wanted to take into university, I decided I had to do it again.

That meant sitting in a class with people a year younger than me, repeating a subject I thought I should already have finished.

I was embarrassed.

But I repeated it, changed how I approached it and moved forward.

I Knew the Exam Hadn’t Gone Well

Sometimes you walk out of an exam and genuinely have no idea how you’ve done.

This wasn’t really one of those times for me.

I’ve always thought of exam questions in a few groups.

There are the bankers. You know you’ve got the marks. You recognise the question, know what to do and feel confident about the answer.

Then there are the 50-50 questions. You think you’ve probably picked up some marks, but maybe not all of them.

Finally, there are the questions where you’re struggling and aren’t expecting much.

I had too many of those.

Sometimes the Worst Part Is Telling Your Parents

At that age, I think one of the biggest worries is having to tell your mum and dad.

Even if your parents have never told you that you must get straight As, you can still create that expectation in your own head.

I’d done well before, so I had probably helped set the bar fairly high myself.

And I’m not going to rewrite history and pretend my mum and dad immediately told me none of it mattered.

They weren’t happy.

They calmed down after a while.

Time is a great healer!

One of my friends had a slightly different strategy. He joked that he deliberately kept expectations low all year so that if he did well in the final exams, everyone would think he’d absolutely smashed it.

To be fair, there might have been some logic in that.

Failing Should Feel Bad

I don’t really like advice that tries to pretend failure is secretly brilliant.

It isn’t.

If you worked towards something and didn’t get the result you wanted, it is completely normal to be disappointed.

You might be embarrassed, angry or worried. You might not want to tell your friends. You might immediately start thinking you’ve ruined your chances of getting into university, college or an apprenticeship.

Those feelings are real.

But feeling bad about something and believing your entire future is ruined are two very different things.

I Had to Admit I Hadn’t Taken It Seriously Enough

There are plenty of genuine reasons why somebody might struggle with an exam.

The subject might be particularly difficult for you. You might have things going on at home. You might be unwell. You might simply learn differently from the way the subject is being taught.

In my own case, though, I also had to take some responsibility.

I hadn’t prioritised schoolwork enough.

And when you’re a teenager, there are approximately 5,000 things that sound more appealing than sitting down with a maths book.

• Football with your friends?
• Going round to someone’s house?
• Gaming?
• Group chat?
• Pretty much anything other than revision?

Somehow schoolwork rarely seemed to win.

What I Did Differently the Second Time

Sitting in that classroom again and realising I had to repeat the whole subject was probably enough motivation on its own.

There was no way I wanted to do it a third time.

So I changed how I approached it.

• I spoke to my teacher more.
• I asked questions when I didn’t understand something.
• I went to after-school study sessions.
• I worked through past-paper books.
• I revised more consistently.
• I used shorter study periods rather than relying on huge last-minute cramming sessions.
• I accepted that sometimes schoolwork had to come before gaming, football or going out.

There wasn’t a magic trick.

Nobody gave me a secret way to learn Higher Maths overnight.

It was mainly about taking it more seriously and putting the work in over time.

Ask for Help Earlier Than I Did

This is one of the biggest things I would tell anyone who is struggling now.

Ask for help.

I don’t know why people are sometimes so reluctant to do it.

If something isn’t making sense, speak to your teacher. Ask a friend who understands it. Speak to family. Look for a tutor. Use online resources.

There will usually be several people willing to help you.

What Should You Actually Do After Bad Exam Results?

Once the initial disappointment has settled slightly, try to turn the problem into a list of options.

You do not need to solve the next ten years of your life today.

You just need to work out the next sensible step.

1. Speak to Your School or Teachers

Ask what they recommend. They may know about resits, appeals, alternative courses or routes you haven’t considered.

2. Contact the College or University

If you’ve narrowly missed an entry requirement, don’t automatically assume everything is finished.

Ask what options are available and whether there are alternative routes onto the course.

3. Look at Resits

If a particular qualification is genuinely important for the route you want, repeating it may be worthwhile.

That’s the route I took with Higher Maths.

4. Consider College or an Apprenticeship

University isn’t the only route into a good career.

For some people, a more practical route can actually suit them much better.

5. Speak to Your Family

Even if you’re dreading the conversation, keeping everything to yourself usually makes the situation feel bigger.

6. Write the Options Down

I’ve always found that problems feel slightly less overwhelming when they’re written on paper.

Instead of:

“I’ve failed. What am I going to do?”

you start getting:

• Option A: Resit the subject.
• Option B: Apply for another course.
• Option C: Go through college.
• Option D: Look at apprenticeships.

Now you’ve got something you can actually work with.

A Different Route Isn’t a Worse Route

There are more routes available than many people realise.

University can be the right route for some careers, but it isn’t automatically the best route for everyone.

College might suit you better.

An apprenticeship might suit you better.

You might repeat a subject, change courses or take a completely different route into the same industry.

I’ve seen apprentices who struggled with the theory side but were excellent practically. Put them into a real working environment and give them something to build, fault-find or repair and suddenly their strengths become obvious.

School exams don’t measure everything somebody can be good at.

Your Grades Become Less Important Once You Start Working

This is difficult to appreciate while you’re still at school.

At that point, grades can feel enormous because they may determine whether you meet the entry requirements for whatever you want to do next.

And sometimes they genuinely are important for that next step.

But once you start working and building experience, their importance starts to fade.

Nobody at work asks me about my school exam results now.

Unfortunately, nobody seems particularly impressed that I did Advanced Highers either.

What matters much more is what you’re actually like to work with.

• Are you interested?
• Do you ask questions?
• Can you solve problems?
• Can people rely on you?
• Are you willing to learn?
• Do you get involved?
• How do you react when something goes wrong?

If you’re on work experience and you show up keen, ask sensible questions, take an interest in what’s happening and offer to help, that can leave a far bigger impression than whether you got an A instead of a B years earlier.

Failure Can Become Useful Experience

Failing Higher Maths wasn’t my last academic setback.

I later had a much bigger setback at university.

That one didn’t feel particularly inspiring at the time either.

But again, I eventually found another route forward.

If you want the longer version of that story, you can read:

I Failed University: Why It Wasn’t the End of My Career
.

I’ve never had that failed year held against me professionally.

If anything, setbacks like these eventually became examples of resilience.

You learn that something can go badly wrong and you can still recover.

That lesson will be useful again.

At some point in your working life or personal life, something will almost certainly not go according to plan.

Knowing you’ve already been knocked backwards once and managed to turn it around isn’t a bad thing to carry with you.

If You’re a Parent Reading This

Being a parent has also shown me that children don’t necessarily learn the same way we did.

Trying to help my own son revise has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

Something that seems obvious when I explain it might make absolutely no sense to him.

There is probably also a point where young people need to make some of their own mistakes and learn how to recover from them.

You can guide them.

You can’t live every mistake for them.

Don’t Compare Their Result With Someone Else’s

I think this is harder now than it used to be.

Results can travel around a family group chat or friend group within minutes.

One person posts that they got five As. Another posts their university acceptance. Parents naturally want to tell people when their child has done well.

Meanwhile, somebody else is sitting looking at a result they’re embarrassed about.

Comparing the two isn’t particularly useful.

There could be a hundred differences between those people: the subjects, how they learn, what was happening at home, how much they studied, what they’re naturally good at and what they actually want to do next.

The question isn’t:

“Why didn’t you do as well as them?”

The useful question is:

“Right. What do we do next?”

If You’ve Just Received Bad Results

You’re allowed to be disappointed.

Failing sucks.

You don’t need somebody pretending otherwise.

But once you’ve had a little time to process it, start looking forward.

Reach out to people.

Speak to your school. Speak to the college or university. Speak to your family. Ask about resits. Look at alternative courses. Look at apprenticeships. Look at other ways into the career you want.

And if the result happened partly because you didn’t put the work in, be honest with yourself about that too.

Because if effort was part of the problem, effort is something you can change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

When I had to repeat Higher Maths, sitting in a classroom with people a year younger than me didn’t feel like some inspiring life lesson.

It was embarrassing.

I would rather have passed properly the first time.

But I didn’t.

So I had two choices.

I could spend all my time being annoyed about what had already happened, or I could work out what I needed to do differently.

I asked for more help. I studied differently. I put more work in. I moved forward.

Later, when I experienced a much bigger failure at university, I’d already learned something useful:

Failing at something does not mean you’re finished.

Sometimes you need another attempt.

Sometimes you need a completely different route.

And sometimes the route you didn’t originally plan turns out perfectly fine anyway.

If you’re going through something similar and your results haven’t gone the way you hoped, you’re welcome to get in touch. I’m happy to share more about my own experience if it helps.

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