ALL places for new students at the University of Huddersfield were snapped up in less than 24 hours.

And almost all of the university’s 200 clearing places were taken within a few hours of Thursday’s A-level results.

Just under 4,800 applicants achieved the grades needed for their courses leaving just over 200 places available in clearing. Huddersfield University had 300 places left for clearing last year.

The university’s call centre said it was busy from 8am, when the first results were released, until the end of the day when almost every clearing place had gone.

Lines were finally closed at 9am yesterday.

University deputy vice-chancellor Peter Slee said: “We pulled the lines this morning.

“We set up a call centre with 52 staff taking calls from potential applicants.

“It’s a very small percentage that went through clearing – it’s a bit lower this year.

“We’ve had a big increase in applications – a 13% increase this year. The demand for our programmes (courses) has increased this year.

“Since 8am on Wednesday morning it’s been really quite busy.”

From next year Huddersfield will charge £7,950 for its courses, compared to £3,290 for this year’s intake.

Speculators have said this may lead to a decrease in the number of applications.

Prof Slee said: “No one knows how students will behave. But we can be reasonably confident we can get a good number of applicants.