Every sixth-former who has applied to study at university next year was today congratulated by Ucas for accepting a place on a teacher-training programme - regardless of the course they hope to study.

Ucas sent the message to more than 61,000 applicants to non-teaching undergraduate courses, before apologising after the error was discovered, and emailing an apology shortly afterwards.

This was not before students shared their experiences on social media.

The Ucas social media team was able to allay some fears, and wish students’ good luck with whatever course they had chosen.

Applicants have been assured that their original applications have not been affected in any way.

Helen Thorne, director of external relations at Ucas, said: “This morning, we sent out an email to university applicants in error advising them that they’d accepted an offer for teacher training. The mistake was picked up quickly by our customer experience and marketing team and an email apology was sent out to all those affected shortly after.

“We would like to reassure university applicants that their applications have not been affected in any way by this. Anyone who was sent this message who has not applied to become a teacher should simply ignore it.”

The deadline for any applications to study medicine, dentistry or veterinary science at any university or to study at Oxford or Cambridge universities was 15 October 2017.

The deadline for most other applications is 15 January 2018.