The 20 outright hardest subjects to get into Oxbridge for, based on acceptance rates

Maybe you actually wish to go to Oxbridge because of your genuine love for learning. Or, maybe you’re just desperate to nab an offer because you were pressured into it from the age of five. I’m afraid your odds of getting into Oxbridge vary wildly depending on which course you pick. The 20 hardest subjects to get into Oxbridge for have some pretty frightening acceptance rates.

The absolute hardest Oxbridge course to get in for is economics and management at the University of Oxford. Only 5.5 per cent of last year’s applicants made it in. Good lord. The trickiest University of Cambridge courses to be accepted for were the graduate medicine course and computer science.

The vast majority of subjects on this list are STEM. Er, you would think people good at maths would calculate they should’ve applied for a subject they had better odds to get in for? The worse humanities subjects to secure places for are law at Oxford, economics at Cambridge (which Oxbridge doesn’t count as STEM, btw) or pretty much anything involving philosophy.

These statistics all refer to the proportion of undergraduate applicants who were accepted through the 2024 admissions cycle, and came from the depths of each uni’s website. Please keep in mind that the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford do dish out slightly more offers than this – not everybody chooses to go, or makes the grades.

So, here are the 20 hardest subjects to get into Oxbridge for:

20. Biochemistry, Oxford – 11.6 per cent

19. Land economy, Cambridge – 11.6 per cent

18. History and economics, Oxford – 11.5 per cent

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The vibey history department at the University of Oxford
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17. Physics, Oxford – 11.4 per cent

16. Fine art, Oxford – 11.3 per cent

15. Medicine, Oxford – 10.7 per cent

=13. Computer science and philosophy, Oxford – 10.4 per cent

=13. Physics and philosophy, Oxford – 10.4 per cent

12. Economics, Cambridge – 10.2 per cent

11. Law, Oxford – 9.7 per cent

10. Mathematics, Oxford – 9.5 per cent

9. Law and LSE, Oxford – 9.4 per cent

If you do make it into Oxford, you’ll need to put ten pics of Radcliffe Square on your story each day, as a minimum

8. Mathematics and computer science, Oxford – 9.3 per cent

7. Biomedical sciences, Oxford – 8.9 per cent

6. Psychological and behavioural sciences, Cambridge – 8.6 per cent

5. Computer science, Cambridge – 7.6 per cent

4. Mathematics and philosophy, Oxford – 6.9 per cent

3. Computer science, Oxford – 6.4 per cent

2. Medicine graduate course, Cambridge – 6.1 per cent

1. Economics and management, Oxford – 5.5 per cent

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