The absolute hardest courses to get into a UK uni for in 2025, ranked by offer rate

UK unis don’t reject as many applicants as you might think. Overall, 70 per cent of applications to UK uni courses result in an offer. As long as you’re predicted the required A-Level grades, you’ve got a good shot. However, there are a few UK uni courses that remain really, really tricky to get into. These are the 20 hardest UK uni courses to get into.

It’s not really a shock that dentistry and medicine courses are so hard to get into. The UK government caps how many places there are on these courses, so wannabe medics have to fight for a fixed number of places. If you dream of being a dentist for some reason, you must prepare to compete with about nine other people for each place. Yikes. Fewer people apply for each place at Oxbridge.

Some of the other subjects on this list are a lot more surprising. Who knew so many people wanted to do university degrees in dance?

This data all comes from UCAS, and refers to the 2024 admissions cycle. Not every student applies to UK unis through UCAS, but the vast majority do.

So, here are the hardest courses to get into UK unis for, ranked by offer rate.

20. Teacher training – 51.2 per cent

19. Statistics – 49.9 per cent

18. Adult nursing – 49.3 per cent

17. Social work – 47.7 per cent

16. Drama – 46.5 per cent

Even if you fail to get onto a drama course, you can still do plenty of plays at uni

15. Nursing (non-specific) – 43.8 per cent

14. Children’s nursing – 42.1 per cent

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13. Mental health nursing – 41.5 per cent

12. Dance – 41.1 per cent

11. Health sciences (non-specific) – 38.6 per cent

10. Information services – 38.0 per cent

9. Physical sciences (non-specific) – 37.4 per cent

Even the posters for physics courses look dull

8. Physiotherapy – 36.8 per cent

7. Medical technology – 36.6 per cent

6. Midwifery – 35.9 per cent

5. Community nursing – 35.0 per cent

4. Veterinary medicine and dentistry – 30.6 per cent

3. Medicine – 26.5 per cent

2. Dentistry – 9.4 per cent

1. Dental nursing – 8.9 per cent

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