A-level results are better than ever, according to figures out today. But some of the thousands of teenagers who get their results tomorrow will have fallen short of their hoped-for grades. STEPHEN LEWIS checks out their options

TOMORROW'S the day thousands of teenagers have been looking forward to with a mixture of anxiety, dread and anticipation for months: A-level results day.

For many, it will be good news; grades achieved, a university place booked, and a promising future beckoning.

But for some tomorrow will confirm their worst fears. The exams didn't go as well as hoped, the grades weren't there - and that longed-for university place looks like going up in smoke.

If you're in that second category, the message from Yorkshire universities is: don't panic. You can still get a place on a good course, even if it's not the one you originally hoped for.

Every year at this time, the telephones lines of UCAS, the universities admission service, are jammed with teenagers desperate to find what courses are available - call 01242 227788. Others get on-line to scan the UCAS website - www.ucas.ac.uk - while still more comb the pages of The Independent.

If you haven't got the grades you wanted the most important thing, says Ian Waghorn, assistant registrar at Ripon and York College, is not to waste time waiting for your first-choice university to confirm in writing you won't be offered a place.

"When you get your results, if they don't match the offer you were set, then start making inquiries straight away," he says. "If subsequently the institution you applied to accepts you, then you have not lost anything and you've got your place.

"But if they haven't been able to accept you, then you've already made inquiries and perhaps lined up an alternative course."

All the major universities in North and East Yorkshire - York, Hull, Hull's new Scarborough campus, and Ripon and York itself - are likely to have places available: as are most other British universities.

At York, clearing vacancies look likely to be available in chemistry, educational studies (not teacher training), health sciences, maths, physics, social policy and sociology. Check out the website for details - www.york.ac.uk - or call the university's admissions office on 01904 433196. To check out what's available at Hull, try its website - www.hull.ac.uk - or call 01482 465103 or the university's Scarborough campus, on 01723 362392. Details of Ripon and York College vacancies will be logged on its website at www.ucrysj.ac.uk or alternatively, call on 01904 656771.

If you are desperate to find a new course, the tendency may be to snap up the first thing in your area of interest that becomes available. But first take time to check the course is what you think it is. To help you Hull is offering open days at both its sites, Scarborough on Saturday August 18 and 25, Hull on August 17, 18 and 20.

"It is important to act quickly, and there are going to be a lot of people jamming phone lines," advises Hull university spokeswoman Julia Elliott. "But it is worth taking your time that little bit, thinking about what you really want and not necessarily rushing into the first thing offered."

Ian Waghorn agrees. "It is very easy to make a rushed decision and find too late it's not really what you want," he says.

For those who have achieved exam success there will be a plethora of increasingly wacky courses and modules beginning in September.

Hull itself was the butt of a few jokes when it announced it was offering a module in Yorkshire Studies - giving students the chance, among other things, to learn about the lives of Scary Spice and TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh.

That's not actually as daft as it seems. Julie Elliott says the module is just one small part of the part-time BA in Arts and Humanities being offered at the university's Scarborough campus, and it is designed to give an insight into the cultural and artistic heritage of Yorkshire.

Whether as much can be said of Birmingham University which is offering a degree in golf remains to be seen. But in principle, says Ian Waghorn, it is a good thing for universities to try to reach out to people who would not be attracted by more academic courses - as long as those are offered too.

His own institution offers modules such as An Introduction To Buddhism - part of the theology and religions studies course. Hardly guaranteed to get employers excited, surely?

"If you're going into equal opportunities legislation or race relations, it may well be seen as a bonus!" Ian says.

"It's important to offer a broad range of courses. If universities only offered courses that gave the maximum chance of getting a job, that would be regrettable. Whatever happened to the idea of doing something for its own sake? You might think that if somebody has done a degree in Anglo-Saxon English, then apart from teaching it there wouldn't be much else they could do.

"But if you're a graduate, you have certain transferable skills.

"That's what it is about."

Updated: 10:43 Wednesday, August 15, 2001