THE RACE for places on popular courses at the best universities has come to resemble a lottery for thousands of students. Admissions tutors may not appreciate it, but more teenagers are raising their sights as the numbers achieving top A-level grades rise.

As with property, they know that location is the name of the game. Demand for places at Oxford and Cambridge has risen by nearly 6 and 7 per cent respectively this year, compared with 3.9 per cent for university applications as a whole.

Almost 14,000 applicants are chasing 3,400 places at Cambridge, and 12,600 are competing for 3,360 positions at Oxford this year. Nearly all are predicted to get three A grades in their exams, leaving high-achieving students jostling to distinguish themselves at college interviews.

The odds seem impossible, but playing the college game can help to tilt them in your favour. Take English at Oxford. Figures compiled by the university show that an average of seven students are competing for each place at Magdalen, whose reputation in English is exceeded only by the beauty of the college. But at Pembroke and Somerville, the average is just two. Balliol’s reputation as the incubator of prominent future politicians contributes to its popularity in PPE, where five applicants are chasing each place. At Keble and Lady Margaret Hall, your chances double.

The situation is similar in other popular subjects. History at Wadham has twice the ratio of candidates for places as Oriel. Your odds are 4-1 to study maths at St John’s, but slightly better than evens at St Catherine’s.

Cambridge does not break down applications in each subject by individual colleges. But clear variations in demand may influence thinking if the primary aim is a Cambridge degree. Of 131 who applied for classics last year, 79 were accepted, and 48 of the 97 candidates for theology and religious studies were successful. Just 26 sought places in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic studies and 18 succeeded. Compare those odds with the 4-1 average in most other subjects, and 6-1 in areas such as law. The catch is that the pool of candidates tends to be self-selecting, made up of people passionately keen on these subjects. Bluffers are found out, but lateral thinkers may be attracted.

The odds at other top universities in the Russell Group look even more intimidating than at Oxbridge because of the volume of applicants. Demand has been stimulated in part by the introduction of “blind” application forms at the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), which have encouraged students to be more ambitious. Universities can no longer see which other institutions students apply to. Sixth-formers who would previously be afraid that Bristol or Nottingham might reject them if they were also applying to Oxford or Cambridge are now putting all three down. The change may help to explain a 23 per cent jump in applications this year to Manchester University to more than 47,000, putting places at a premium. There were also double-digit increases in applications to Newcastle and Liverpool.

Getting the balance right between favourite subjects and preferred universities is the hardest decision for students. The subject tables help those who know what they want to study to decide where their best chances lie.

But students who set their hearts on a particular university are often willing to be more flexible on the courses they study if they lose their first choice. Ucas figures analysing the “true”preference of applicants, based on the subject that dominates their application forms, show some courses admit more students than actually sought places. Of the 8,500 whose intention was history, 7,900 were successful. Some of the unlucky candidates clearly opted for subjects such as politics, American studies, and combinations of history and philosophical studies. More than 9,300 had their sights set on English, but only 8,500 got places. How many opted instead for linguistics or imaginative writing?

All tables are available online at

www.timesonline.co.uk/uniguide. The Good University Guide, including profiles of all 100 universities, will be published later this month.

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