What to do if you didn't go to university

Try to break into a part-time job

This is a kind of alternate airfield for those who are determined to go to university, but will not enroll in full-time education. Applicants applying to undergraduate and specialist programs are eligible to apply for admission to five universities in three directions in each. If you have any doubts that you will pass the full-time form, look in advance on specialties where you can get education by correspondence. Universities can set the deadlines for submitting documents for this form on their own, so take a look at the university's website and study the admission rules.

Many are dismissive of the correspondence course and believe that this is just for the sake of a diploma, and knowledge here will not really be given. In fact, distance learning requires much greater dedication and responsibility. You will have to master a significant part of the material on your own, and getting credits for beautiful eyes will not work here. But study can be combined with work without any problems, so that by the end of the university there is not only a diploma, but also a good experience. And you will also save a lot - distance learning is usually cheaper than full-time education.

Go to college

When the whole school is frightened with horror stories from the series “if you study badly, you’ll go to vocational school”, the mere thought of college or technical school somehow feels uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong here: secondary vocational education is a story not only about locksmiths and plumbers (by the way, very important and necessary specialists). In college, you can study to be a designer, editor, photographer, or even a jeweler. If you have already more or less decided on a profession, this is a chance to get a specialty faster than at a university: usually secondary vocational education programs are designed for a period of 2 to 4 years.

By the way, such an education has an advantage over a university correspondence course - full-time students are entitled to a deferment from the army. The deadline for accepting documents in 2020, subject to availability, can be extended until November 25, so check in advance how all this is organized in the college or technical school where you want to apply.

Find a job

If you have already turned 16, you can not limit yourself to occasional part-time jobs, but conclude an employment contract and work officially. In some areas, minors are not allowed to enter: for example, they will not be taken to a casino or a nightclub, and not even close to work with harmful or dangerous working conditions. But there are bonuses: employees under the age of 18 are entitled to a shorter working week, and vacation is 31 calendar days.

The traditional set of vacancies for recent high school students includes waiters, couriers and animators, but no one forbids making money on their skills. If you are friends with a camera, offer the services of a photographer on social networks, draw well - try yourself in design and animation, write essays smartly - it seems that you will make a good copywriter. You can start with freelancing, and then word of mouth will work.

Learn on your own

Firstly, if the USE results are so-so, you can retake the exams in a year, so now look for courses or a tutor in subjects with which everything is difficult. Secondly, there is an option to partially master the program of the university through online courses. You will not be given a bachelor's degree in remote sciences, but you can get an electronic certificate and try to count the passed course when you enter the university.

Here are some resources where you can study online:

Open Education - 590 courses from leading Russian universities. Among the areas of training are mathematics, natural sciences and humanities, health care, engineering, as well as arts and culture. Online courses are eligible for undergraduate and specialist degree programs.
"Universarium" is an open system of electronic education. It contains both university courses and training programs from large companies like Google and Mail.ru.
Stepik is a large catalog of courses in mathematics, science and humanities. There is even a section for those who want to do programming, but have little idea of how it all works.
Teach-in - a selection of video lectures by teachers of Moscow State University. The lectures are divided into semesters according to the level of difficulty.

Master your profession with online courses

In some areas, knowledge and skills quickly become obsolete, so you need to constantly improve your qualifications in order to remain valuable in the labor market. Universities do not always keep up with the changing requirements for graduates, and in the end it turns out to be a shame: you spent several years studying, you come to work and start learning everything anew. Of course, there are limitations here: you cannot learn a doctor with the help of distance education, but you can get a specialty of a web developer without any problems.

If you are looking for yourself in IT, design or marketing, it is better to learn from practitioners. These services will help you enter a new profession and become a top specialist:

GeekBrains is an educational portal where you can master more than 30 professions from scratch: from web developer to game designer or SMM manager. There are courses for those under 17 and free intensives.
Netology is an online university with a focus on online professions. It teaches programming, web design and analytics, and many of the lectures are free to watch.
Yandex. Praktikum - the service offers a choice of seven specialties: you can study, for example, as a tester or a data science specialist. If you are in doubt about whether it is worth paying for a course, try the free trial modules.