Oxbridge Admissions Statistics: How Hard Is It to Get In?

Getting into Oxbridge is hard, but thousands of students do it every year. In the 2025 admissions cycle, Oxford received 23,329 applications, made 3,891 offers and admitted 3,302 students. Cambridge received 22,513 applications, made 4,893 offers and accepted 3,669, a published success rate of 16.3%. Your real odds depend heavily on the course you pick.

That's a lot of numbers, so let's make them useful. Everything below comes from the two universities' own reports: Oxford's Annual Admissions Statistical Report (published June 2026, covering 2021 to 2025) and Cambridge's Undergraduate Admissions Statistics for the 2025 cycle (published May 2026). Both are the latest editions. In both reports, "2025" means applications sent in autumn 2024, mostly for entry in 2025.

How hard is it to get into Oxbridge?

Here are the headline figures for the 2025 cycle side by side.

Both universities make more offers than they end up admitting. Oxford says this allows for candidates who decline, withdraw or miss their conditions.

The bigger point is who you're up against. Most people who apply have excellent grades. Oxford reports that 54.8% of its UK applicants with A-level results were awarded A*AA or better. Cambridge goes further: 5,885 Home applicants who didn't get a place still went on to achieve A*AA or better. So top grades get you into the conversation, and the rest of your application decides it.

What is Oxford's acceptance rate?

Oxford's report doesn't print a single acceptance rate, but it does give five years of totals.

Put the 2025 numbers next to each other and roughly one application in six led to an offer. That's our arithmetic from Oxford's figures, not a rate Oxford publishes.

The process explains how that happens. Oxford says it typically aims to interview three candidates for every place, and that around a third of those interviewed are then made an offer. Interviews happen in early December and offers go out in January.

Where you live matters too. Oxford states that UK applicants are "substantially more likely to receive an offer" than students from outside the UK. In 2025, UK applicants sent 14,340 applications and received 3,006 offers, while non-EU applicants sent 7,600 and received 784. UK students made up 79.0% of those admitted.

What is Cambridge's acceptance rate?

Cambridge's overall success rate for the 2025 cycle was 16.3%. Applications, offers and acceptances all rose slightly on 2024, when it had 22,153 applications, 4,760 offers and 3,632 acceptances. Cambridge counts the success rate as the share of applicants accepted at confirmation, after results, so it's a stricter measure than an offer rate.

Two details are worth knowing:

• Home applicants do better. Home applications had a success rate of 19.6%, against 10.7% for all other applications.
• The Winter Pool works. Of the 4,893 offers, 953 were made through the Winter Pool, by a college other than the one the applicant applied to. Not getting an offer from your chosen college isn't always the end.

Cambridge's figures also leave out 289 people who applied through UCAS but never completed the extra My Cambridge Application. Don't let paperwork be the reason you miss out.

Which Oxbridge courses are most competitive?

This is where the averages hide the real story. Competition varies hugely between courses, so the subject you choose shapes your chances more than anything else on this page.

Oxford: most applicants per place (2023 to 2025)

Oxford publishes the courses with the highest number of applicants per place, based on its 25 largest courses and added up over three years.

Oxford doesn't publish a matching "least competitive" list, but its course table shows the contrast. Over 2023 to 2025, Modern Languages received 520 applications from UK state-school students and made 298 offers to them. Economics and Management received 1,613 and made 119.

Cambridge: success rates by course (2025 cycle)

Cambridge publishes a success rate for every course. Here's a selection, from the toughest to the most generous.

Look at Mathematics: 555 offers but 258 acceptances. An offer is only half the battle, and the conditions still have to be met.

A higher success rate doesn't mean a course is easy. The applicants are still very strong, and on small courses a handful of decisions can swing the rate. Oxford makes the same warning about its own course figures. Choose a course you'd love to study for three or four years, then use these numbers to set realistic expectations. If you're weighing up medicine, our guides to Oxford Medicine entry requirements and Cambridge Medicine entry requirements cover each course in detail.

Do state school students get into Oxbridge?

Yes, and they make up most of each intake. Here are the 2025 figures for UK students by school type.

Oxford's shares leave out students whose school can't be classed as state or independent. Cambridge's shares cover Home applicants from UK schools and colleges. At Cambridge, the success rate was 19.1% for maintained-school applicants and 21.3% for independent-school applicants.

Oxford's state-school share has dipped slightly, from 68.2% in 2021 to 66.5% in 2025. Its report also notes that state-school students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects: between 2023 and 2025, 40.9% of state-school applications went to five of them (Law, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy, Politics and Economics), compared with 30.5% of independent-school applications. Course choice really does change the odds.

Your background can count in your favour too. Oxford says shortlisting takes account of any factors that might give context to your past or predicted grades, and Cambridge's August Reconsideration Pool gives some applicants from under-represented backgrounds a second look if they do better than expected in their exams. Our guide to contextual offers explains how this works across UK universities.

What grades do you need for Oxford and Cambridge?

For 2027 entry (applying by 15 October 2026), the two universities' admissions pages set out these offer levels:

• Oxford: A-level offers "range between A*A*A and AAA depending on the course".
• Cambridge: courses have a typical A-level offer of A*AA or A*A*A, depending on the course.

Oxford is clear that its offers are "made on the basis of exam grades rather than UCAS Tariff points". It gives a neat example: three A* or A grades would meet most conditional offers, but two A*s and two Bs would not, even with that fourth A-level in the mix.

Most successful applicants go well beyond the minimum. At Oxford, 87.2% of UK students admitted in 2025 had A*AA or better, and 47.1% had three A* grades or better. At Cambridge, 94.2% of accepted Home students with three or more A-levels had the equivalent of A*AA or better in their best three.

If you want to compare Oxbridge offers with your other choices, here's what the grades are worth on the Tariff. An A* is worth 56 UCAS points and an A is worth 48.

You'll find every A-level grade on our A-level UCAS points table, and the full A*A*A breakdown on the A*A*A UCAS points page.

When is the Oxbridge application deadline?

For 2027 entry, applications to Oxford and Cambridge should reach UCAS by 18:00 UK time on 15 October 2026. The same date applies to most courses in medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine or science. UCAS calls it the equal consideration date, and Oxford's own report simply calls 15 October "the Oxford deadline", so treat it as fixed.

You can add choices with a later deadline afterwards, but you can only have five choices in total. Our UCAS deadlines guide lists every date in the 2027 cycle, including the main January deadline for your other universities.

How should you use these statistics?

Treat the numbers as a planning tool, not a verdict on you. A few practical steps:

1. Pick your course first. Success rates at Cambridge run from 7.4% to 50.6% depending on the course, so check the figures for the subject you actually want.
2. Check your predicted grades against the offer. Pop them into the UCAS points calculator to see how they compare with the rest of your list.
3. Build a strong back-up plan. With a 16.3% success rate at Cambridge and roughly one offer per six applications at Oxford, your other four choices matter. Our guide to firm and insurance choices shows how to balance ambition and safety.
4. Look beyond the famous two. The Russell Group universities include many other research-intensive options with outstanding courses.

Work out your UCAS points