As of midnight on Sunday 16 August a total of 452,990 people had been placed in full-time UK higher education, an increase of 3% on the same point last year. Of these, over 29,000 people have been accepted through Clearing, a rise of 6% on the same stage last year and the highest number recorded by UCAS at this early stage.
The weekend following A level results day always sees a high numbers accepted through in Clearing - but the patterns of recent years suggest this number could double by the end of the application cycle.
The Clearing total is made up of 25,130 placed after applying to the main UCAS scheme, as well as 4,250 who applied direct to Clearing after the 30 June deadline.
Over 143,000 people are still free to be placed in Clearing, down 4% on last year. This number goes down as the number of placed applicants go up. Some applicants in this unplaced group will not have met their offer conditions, others will have received no offers earlier in the year, and some have chosen not to accept any offers.
Students not holding offers can enter Clearing up until 21 September - if they choose to. A total of 61,300 people were placed through Clearing by the end of the 2014 cycle.
Mary Curnock Cook, UCAS’ Chief Executive said: “We saw an energetic Clearing period over the weekend, with many universities holding open days and staffed to take calls from students.”
UCAS’ Daily Clearing Analysis reports can be found here, looking at country of domicile and institution, as well as age, sex and background (POLAR3) of applicants and the subjects and types of institution (Tariff group) they have been accepted to.
These updates will be published for the next nine working days until Friday 28th August. Our End of Cycle Report for 2015 will be published on 17 December and will assess the full admissions year and include final applicant and acceptance totals.
Ends
Notes to editors:
For this cycle we introduced a parallel set of context statistics that excludes, from all cycles, applications to teacher training courses at providers in Scotland. This is because a large set of teacher training courses in Scotland are being recruited through the UCAS Undergraduate scheme for the first time in 2015, having previously been recruited through UCAS Teacher Training.
The primary set of statistics describes all acceptances in the UCAS scheme. The context set of statistics (headline numbers quoted in this press release) gives a better ‘like for like’ comparison of 2015 to earlier cycles, particularly when looking at applicants from Scotland, providers in Scotland, or the Education subject group.
In Scotland there is also a substantial section of provision that is not included in UCAS' figures. This is mostly full-time higher education provided in further education colleges which represents around one third of young full-time undergraduate study in Scotland, and this proportion varies by geography and background in Scotland.
About UCAS
UCAS is a charity and is the UK's shared admissions service for higher education. We manage applications from over 650,000 applicants each year for full-time undergraduate courses at over 350 universities and colleges across the UK.