Ucas says “Nearly 190,000 applicants are eligible for clearing – often because they have not got the grades they needed – including students from overseas.” That’s almost 5000 more than this time last year!

However, thousands of hopefuls waited hours, on edge as the Ucas Track website, where teenagers find out whether they have got their university places, was taken down, after the system could not cope with the number of people logging on.

Ucas apologised as teens expressed their anger via means of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, they said that the number of people logging on has been four times higher than last year, but all sytems have now been restored.