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Nearly two hundred A-Level students have been let down after a mistake by Exeter University last week. They may now have to look for student jobs in Exeter or their hometowns for a year as many will have also missed out in the clearing system.

Ucas, the university admissions service, confirmed to the students that they had been awarded places on Exeter courses. However, when some of the sixth-formers logged on the next day to check, they found out that they had in actual fact been rejected.

The mistake is being blamed on a ‘clerical error.’ That will be small comfort to those 190 unfortunates who will now have to try to seal one of the last few places at another institution. They also have the other options of filling their enforced year off with a student job or by taking a gap year.

As if one clerical error wasn’t enough, another 188 students were also offered a place at the wrong Exeter campus. They were sent a letter offering them a place at the main campus when they should have been offered places a hundred miles away at the Cornwall campus!

Exeter University has already offered places next year to the students involved but it still leaves many of them with the dilemma of what to do in the meantime.

The Guardian reported that Lancastrian Becky Anderson, 17, had narrowly missed out on a maths course at Exeter but received a letter from Ucas saying she had been successful. Becky said she would take the place offered in 2010 but is ‘worried about how she is going to find a job at such short notice.’

Writing on the Guardian website, another one of the 190 students said that it had been the ‘worst few days ever.’ She said that Exeter made no effort to contact her even though her parents had left the university with various methods of contact. She added ruefully that, “I have accepted the offer for 2010, but am now having to plan a very impromptu gap year."

If you are looking for student jobs in Exeter or other parts of the country then you’ll find our student job search pages very helpful. E4s also have other sections of the website devoted to all of the latest gap year opportunities.