Welp, these are officially the hardest Oxbridge courses to get onto in 2024

Getting into Oxbridge to impress your parents feels near impossible. You have to read enough books to gaslight professors into thinking you care about their subject, produce a perfect personal statement, revise for a nasty painful admissions test, and survive being grilled in an interview. But, there’s a massive difference between how likely you are to get into Oxbridge for different courses in 2024. You are 16 times more likely to get in for the easiest subject, modern languages at Oxford, than you are for the hardest subject, Mathematics and statistics at Oxford. Really.

STEM courses are generally harder to get into Oxbridge for than the humanities subjects are. Nine out of the 10 hardest Oxbridge courses are STEM subjects, and the other one is Law (which most humanities girlies take offence at being called an arts subject). Presumably, this is because most Oxbridge hopefuls are clever enough to know that humanities degrees are fairly useless, so they don’t bother applying for them.

These stats come from Oxford and Cambridge’s websites, and refer to the current freshers.

So, here are the 40 hardest courses to be let into Oxbridge for in 2024, ranked by the percentage of applicants who get in:

40. Archaeology and anthropology, Oxford – 20.0 per cent

39. History and politics, Cambridge – 19.6 per cent

38. Philosophy and theology, Oxford – 19.2 per cent

37. Engineering science, Oxford – 19.0 per cent

36. Geography, Cambridge – 18.9 per cent

35. Chemical engineering and biotechnology, Cambridge – 18.0 per cent

34. Education, Cambridge – 17.9 per cent

33. Psychology, philosophy and linguistics, Oxford – 17.5 per cent

32. Biology, Oxford – 17.3 per cent

31. Human sciences, Oxford – 16.6 per cent

30. Philosophy, Cambridge – 16.3 per cent

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29. Mathematics, Cambridge – 16.2 per cent

28. Medicine, Cambridge – 15.6 per cent

27. History of art, Oxford – 15.0 per cent

26. Experimental psychology, Oxford – 14.8 per cent

25. Law, Cambridge – 14.6 per cent

=23. Philosophy, politics and economics, Oxford – 14.2 per cent

=23. History and politics, Oxford – 14.2 per cent

22. Engineering, Cambridge – 13.8 per cent

21. Biochemistry, Oxford – 13.1 per cent

20. Physics, Oxford – 12.7 per cent

19. History and English, Oxford – 12.5 per cent

18. Mathematics and philosophy, Oxford – 12.3 per cent

17. Fine art, Oxford – 12.2 per cent

16. English, Oxford – 12.1 per cent

15. History and economics, Oxford – 12.0 per cent

At least Oxford looks nice once you’ve got there
(Credit: Francesca Gunner)

14. Law, Oxford – 11.8 per cent

13. Human, social and political sciences (HSPS), Cambridge – 11.6 per cent

12. Architecture, Cambridge – 11.5 per cent

11. Land economy, Cambridge – 11.3 per cent

10. Mathematics and computer science, Oxford – 11.0 per cent

9. Medicine, Oxford – 9.5 per cent

8. Biomedical sciences, Oxford – 9.4 per cent

7. Psychological and behavioural sciences, Cambridge – 9.1 per cent

6. Law Studies in Europe, Oxford – 8.2 per cent

5. Computer science, Cambridge – 7.6 per cent

4. Medicine graduate course, Cambridge – 7.3 per cent

3. Computer science, Oxford – 6.8 per cent

2. Economics and management, Oxford – 5.9 per cent

1. Mathematics and statistics, Oxford – 3.5 per cent

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Feature image credit: Sophie Carlin