How UCAS offer rates work
An offer rate is the number of offers a university made divided by the number of applications it received. UCAS publishes these figures every year in its End of Cycle data, and the calculator above uses the latest cycle for applicants from England aged 18. Across every university and subject, 80% of applications got an offer in 2025, from 1,366,780 applications. That average hides a huge spread: medicine and dentistry made offers to 34% of applications, while psychology made offers to 90%. At the extreme, University of Oxford made offers to 9% of business and management applications.
A low rate means demand is high relative to places. It does not mean the course is better, and a high rate does not mean it is worse: many universities simply have room and would rather make a conditional offer than lose a strong applicant.
Why it is a subject area, not a single course
UCAS does not publish offer rates for individual courses. It groups courses into about twenty broad subject areas (the CAH classification) and reports one figure per university for each. So “social sciences” at one university can cover economics, politics, sociology and dozens of joint honours, all sharing a single rate. If a university’s economics degree is far more competitive than its sociology degree, the shared figure will flatter economics and undersell sociology.
Treat the number as the backdrop, not the verdict. It tells you whether a university is broadly selective in that area. Small areas with only a few dozen applications are noisy, because UCAS rounds every count to the nearest 5.
What a typical offer is
The typical offer is the grades a university usually asks for, such as AAB at A-level. The calculator shows the most common offer across the courses in that subject area, plus the range when courses differ. Offers can be lower for contextual applicants (see the contextual offer checker) and some courses add required subjects or admissions tests. The entrant grades panel shows what students who started the course actually had, from Discover Uni. When a large share arrived below the typical offer, the university is often flexible on results day.
Your own chance depends on both numbers together. A course with an 83% offer rate is a long shot if your predicted grades sit two grades below its typical offer, and a course with a 40% rate can be a sensible choice if you are predicted well above it.
Firm and insurance: using offer rates well
You get five UCAS choices, then pick a firm and an insurance once your offers arrive. The risk to manage is ending up with no offers, or with a firm and insurance that both ask for grades you might miss. A balanced five usually has one or two ambitious choices with low offer rates, two that match your predicted grades, and one with a high rate and a typical offer below your predictions. For the insurance, pick a course whose typical offer is clearly lower than your firm’s, so missing your firm by a grade still leaves you a place. Our guide on which offer to firm goes through it step by step.
The calculator looks at one course at a time. To see your odds across all five together, with your predicted grades, use the OfferCheck five-choice check.