The Central Applications Office (CAO) says 73,652 Round One Offers have been made to 50,746 CAO applicants.

These consist of 42,301 Level 8 course offers and 31,351 Level 7/6 course offers.

Applicants can check to see if they have received an offer by logging on to their account using the 'My Application' facility at the CAO website.

Successful applicants will also receive an offer notification via e-mail and text message, if they selected this option on their application form.

The CAO says paper offer notices will reach "the majority of applicants" on Monday

If an applicant has not received an offer, they will receive a 'Statement of Application Record' in the post.

Eileen Keleghan, CAO communications officer, says: "If an applicant accepts an offer in Round One this will not prevent them from receiving an offer of a course higher up on their courses list in a later offer round if a place becomes available and they are deemed eligible.

"Those who received an offer in this round should consider the current offer as being the last one they may receive.

"It is also important that applicants notify CAO immediately if there are any errors or omissions in any of the correspondence received from CAO.

"They must make sure to do this well in advance of the next offer round to allow any corrections to be considered in subsequent offer rounds.

"The acceptance window is shorter than in previous years for both Round One and Round Two, so applicants must take care to ensure that they have accepted by the reply date" she adds.

Shorter deadline

Applicants have until August 24th at 5:15pm to accept Round One offers - if they fail to accept by this date their offer will lapse.

It is possible that applicants may receive two offers at the same time: one from the Level 8 list and one from the Level 7/6 list.

Applicants must choose between these lists and can only accept one offer - if they accept both offers, the last recorded acceptance received by CAO by the reply date is the one that will be counted.

Those wishing to contact the CAO during this time are asked to use the 'Contact' form on the website and to include their CAO application number and the nature of their enquiry in the subject line - giving as much information as possible in the message will help CAO to respond to their query in detail.