UCAS accidentally rejects 20,000 students’ uni offers

UCAS accidentally automatically rejected 20,000 students this morning.

A glitch in its system meant around one in five of the 100,000 students who have until midnight tonight to make their university decisions, instead received emails this morning telling them their offers had been lost, Schools Week reports.

UCAS tweeted this morning saying “we’re sorry some offers have been automatically declined in error before the deadline”, adding it was working to “urgently” fix it. It said also assured students “you will not be disadvantaged by this error.”

People tweeted saying they had been “completely traumatised” by the “unbearable stress”.

One said: “This gave us a near heart attack this morning as we were shocked to seeing all our offers getting auto declined”.

One parent tweeted in response: “One very stressed daughter, email received at 1am telling her that all her offers were lost. The icing on a very difficult 18 months.”

Another said: “My daughter has been unbelievably stressed and is not doing okay since the morning!!!”

Sander Kristel, chief operations officer at UCAS, told Schools Week a fifth (20,000) of the 100,000 applicants had been affected.

She said: “Unfortunately, a small percentage of those due to make their decisions today were automatically declined earlier this morning due to a systems error.

“This error was fixed by 9.30am and students were then able to access their application to accept their offers in the usual way.

“We have apologised to all affected students and reiterated that our teams are available on the telephone lines and social media to provide support and advice as students make their decisions today.”

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