We found out how many people at your uni took a gap year

It’s freshers’ week and the main topic of conversations at the awkwardly forced mixers which your SUs and Colleges have put on include your degree course, your A-level choices, and of course, the dreaded “on my gap year” stories. It doesn’t stop there – this lasts at least three years.

We mock such people, often ignoring their six pretty grim months of pot-washing beforehand to save for these travels.

Secretly, those of us who went straight to uni after our A-levels are pretty jealous of the trips to Cambodia and the street markets in Bogota. However, more of you went to find yourselves before uni than you might have originally thought.

In fact, 38 per cent of students at Oxford Brookes took a year out before their undergrad courses to take edgy pics on Peru’s Salt Flats and shot snakes’s hearts in Vietnam.

Unsurprisingly, those destined for Exeter, Bristol and Reading are also pretty keen for some exploring before hitting the books, with around a quarter of you choosing a gap year.

Even less surprisingly, the few with a coveted offer from Oxford choose to go straight to their cloistered colleges rather than risk a deferral application. Hidden within our sex survey – which was answered by 12,000 people – we asked how many of you took a gap year before uni. Here’s the results:

What percentage of your uni took a gap year?

Aberdeen – 21 per cent

Aberystwyth – 20 per cent

Bath – 16 per cent

Belfast – 16 per cent

Birmingham – 17 per cent

Bristol – 26 per cent

Cambridge – 20 per cent

Cardiff – 18 per cent

Durham – 18 per cent

Edinburgh – 14 per cent

Exeter – 24 per cent

Hull – 14 per cent

Glasgow – 18 per cent

John Moores – 17 per cent

Kent – 19 per cent

King’s – 28 per cent

Lancaster – 11 per cent

Leeds – 23 per cent

Leicester – 15 per cent

Lincoln – 18 per cent

Liverpool – 22 per cent

Loughborough – 19 per cent

Manchester – 23 per cent

Newcastle – 21 per cent

Northumbria – 21 per cent

Nottingham – 20 per cent

Oxford – 9 per cent

Oxford Brookes – 38 per cent

Reading – 24 per cent

Royal Holloway – 13 per cent

Sheffield – 20 per cent

Southampton – 13 per cent

Sussex – 22 per cent

Trent – 24 per cent

UCL – 24 per cent

UEA – 19 per cent

Warwick – 11 per cent

York – 17 per cent