As at 12:30 on Friday 17 August, UCAS statistics show:
Commenting on the status of the 2012 admissions cycle, UCAS Chief Executive Mary Curnock Cook said: "The combination of fewer applicants and the lifting of number controls for higher achieving candidates means there are many more courses with vacancies in Clearing this year.
"We expect the overall acceptance rate for applicants to rise."
The UCAS Clearing vacancy service is listing over 25,000 courses with vacancies for UK students compared to about 14,000 last year.
This year UCAS emailed 300,000 applicants on A level results day to confirm their place or to let them know they were unplaced. The organisation handled over 20,000 telephone queries in 24 hours and our Social Media team responded to a further 2,000 messages.
Some university-facing systems were disrupted for a short while on Thursday but all systems were fully functional from Thursday evening.
Mary Curnock Cook said: "This has been a year of change which is always a challenge to manage. We have been grateful for the high levels of professionalism in HE admissions offices which have worked hard to ensure applicants get decisions as quickly as possible. A higher proportion of applications have been processed and finalised than at the same time last year."
Media contactsNotes to Editors
UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admission Service, is a charity and is the world's leading shared admissions service for higher education. We manage applications from over 650,000 applicants each year for full-time undergraduate courses at over 300 institutions across the UK.