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These data cover applications, offers, and placed applicants by sex, area background, and ethnic group, at 132 larger universities.

The data is provided as a PDF report for each university, and also as a raw data file to support further analysis.

Our guidance document (85.16 KB) explains what the statistics in the data measure, how they are defined, and how to use them.

Key technical points

Offer rates – Whether an application gets an offer depends on both the predicted grades held and the course applied to. The statistic ‘difference between offer rate and average offer rate’ accounts for differences between groups in predicted grades and courses applied to. You can check whether any difference is likely to be solely the result of random variation or not with our average offer rate lookup table (234.18 KB).

Placed applicants – Some groups in the population are more numerous than others. The statistic ‘Placed applicants per 10,000 population’ takes account of UK population and allows the relative chances of different groups to enter the university to be compared.

Ethnic group – The population of different ethnic groups is not even across the UK. For example, over 20% of the young population in London is in the Black ethnic group (9.74 KB), compared to 1% in the South West. This can be reflected in the statistics for a university.

POLAR and SIMD – The POLAR3 grouping is used to classify young people from across the UK into five equal-sized groups, according to how many young people participate in higher education. However, these groups are not of equal sizes across different parts of the UK. There are lower proportions of the population in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and London living in low participation (quinitle 1) areas (9.95 KB), compared to elsewhere in the UK. This can be reflected in the statistics for a university and comparisons between countries. For universities in Scotland, an additional classification (SIMD16) is provided in the statistics. This covers only applicants from Scotland, and is appropriate for comparisons based on equal-sized groups of the population in Scotland (where it is widely used).

Sex – There are some large differences in the subjects studied at university by men and women. Different profiles of subjects at different universities can be reflected in the statistics for men and women. Statistics on subjects studied by men and women, and subjects at different universities, can be found in our data resources.



Queen's University Belfast (Q75) – The scope of the statistics for this university changed in 2013 when nursing and midwifery applications were included for the first time. These courses have a higher ratio of applications to places, and a different profile of applicants (by sex especially). This change affects the time series for all statistics for this university.

University of East London (E28) – The 2017 statistics for University of East London (E28) were adversely affected by a UCAS technical issue, which meant that around 800 records were not processed as RPA (Record of Prior Acceptance). This will not affect statistics related to applicants at the 30 June deadline.

More data on providers and definitions can be found in our UCAS Undergraduate end of cycle data resources.

Download the CSV file of all the provider level data (24.45 MB)

Download the CSV files of all the aggregate level data (102.45 KB)

View the data explorer for these reports (experimental)

Find individual university reports in PDF format using the A-Z drop-down list below


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