As a result, four of them were granted places at Cambridge the following year.
Oxford grants places before A-level results are known, so it relies on AS levels, which are sat the year before, GCSE results and, crucially, an interview.
UCAS, the university admissions service, said yesterday that 5,205 candidates had been granted places during the first day of clearing – an increase of more than 50 per cent on the figure for 2008.
And while Dizzee, Jay-Z and MIA are grudgingly granted places, there's nowhere for Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, perhaps the single most influential rap album of them all.
Even the IAAF's decision on whether the Russian Athletics Federation returns to competition in time for the Games may not be the end of the matter, with the International Olympic Committee having signalled that it could be sympathetic to granting places to individual athletes who meet stringent criteria.
One boy was helped to get a job in a courier service and then a restaurant, two more were granted places at a special college to develop computer skills and the centre paid for another child to serve an apprenticeship with a hairdresser.
The grant will place the DRC on track towards meeting millennium development goal number 7- halving, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
She was, at the age of 17, the youngest student granted a place at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
Independent filmmakers don't take for granted their place in the cinematic firmament and don't even presume its existence.
In a statement it would say only: "There is an established system of special grants in place to support forces where they face unexpected or exceptional costs.
