The University of Wolverhampton’s clearing hotline has been inundated by more than 10,000 calls from students who failed to make the grade in their A-levels, it emerged today.

Wolverhampton has now offered places to more than 600 applicants since the telephone lines opened at 6.30am last Thursday.

The University of Birmingham, which had 40,943 applications for 5,450 places this year, received over 2,000 clearing calls. The university filled 50 places through clearing but is now full.

Staffordshire University said its calls were up 50 per cent on last year but it still had a few places left.

Wolverhampton said the process had been ‘very successful’ and courses for teaching, nursing and pharmacy were now full.

The city university was granted an extra 250 places this year, mainly for business, computing, engineering, science and maths courses.

It bucked the national trend by having 1,000 clearing places on offer while many other universities offered much fewer or no places.

Academic registrar Paul Travill said today there were still a few places in the School of Engineering and the Built Environment and School of Computing and IT.

He said: “My advice to anyone still interested in starting university this September is to ring us to see if we can help. Even if we don’t have places, we can suggest alternative routes into the university.”

Wolverhampton, which received 24,000 applications for just 9,000 places, took more than 6,000 calls on the first day of clearing – double the number from the same time last year.

More than 120 A-level students also logged on to the university’s new on-line chat service for advice.

Staffordshire spokeswoman Maria Scrivens said there were still places available for courses in humanities, art, media, business, accounting, psychology, law and a handful of others.

She said: “Applications are up by somewhere in the region of nine per cent and we have taken advantage of the Government offer of additional places.”