Latest news: Places remain at Russell Group universities

UK students can still find places on as many as 1,000 courses at Russell Group universities, despite there being less than a week to go until the student application deadline. 14/09/2012

According to the Daily Telegraph, seven of the elite institutions continue to advertise vacancies for a wide range of programmes, with eligible clearing candidates having until 20 September to apply.

This comes after UCAS revealed there were some 30,000 more places available through the clearing system in universities across the country this year compared to 2011.

The news source disclosed that Queen Mary, University of London , the University of Sheffield  and the University of Exeter  were three of the establishments still accepting applications for places on courses such as psychology, classics, English literature and law.

Experts believe that this is result of tuition fees increasing, along with a reduction of the number of school leavers achieving at least two As and one B in their A-levels.

Universities minister David Willets, speaking at the Universities UK annual conference, said, 'I think we are likely to see fewer students going to university this year because last year's figure was partly artificially inflated by fewer people taking a gap year. But I still think we will have very high numbers of students going to university'.

He went on to suggest that the drop in applicants was likely to be nothing more than a 'temporary jolt' for universities.