Thousands of students faced "stress and uncertainty" after a glitch in UCAS’s system automatically rejected their university offers on Thursday morning. 

According to Schools Week, the technical issue affected one in five of the 100,000 students who have until midnight today, June 10, to accept or decline their offers through the admissions service’s portal.

Around 20,000 received emails from the organisation in the early hours of this morning telling them that their offers were lost.

UCAS tweeted at 8.36am on Thursday alerting applicants that a glitch in their system meant some of their offers were mistakenly rejected by the system.

It read: "We're sorry some offers have been automatically declined in error before the deadline. 

"We're working to fix this urgently and your offers will be available for you to make your replies shortly.

"Please be assured you will not be disadvantaged by this error." 

The students affected underwent a stressful few hours as they saw their university offers disappear.

One Twitter user commented: "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 applicant tweeted: "40 minutes on hold on the phone line and a DM message and no response.

"This is causing unbearable stress. Please could somebody take the time to relieve at least some stress by updating the website with a banner or a group email to all applicants?"

Sander Kristel, chief operations officer at UCAS, initially told Schools Week a "small percentage" of the 100,000 prospective students had been affected, before clarifiying this amounted to one in five applicants.

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.”

UCAS has since resolved the issue, reassuring students that they will be able to accept their offers before tonight's deadline.