Oxford/Cambridge success rate

Hey this is probably pretty useless but can someone tell me on average how many people one have to compete with e.g. 1:3 means you have to compete with 3 other people with one place obviously... is it likely to be higher than 1:3 for both universities?

Hey this is probably pretty useless but can someone tell me on average how many people one have to compete with e.g. 1:3 means you have to compete with 3 other people with one place obviously... is it likely to be higher than 1:3 for both universities?

mind you now looking at it more carefully things like law it is about 1:5!

This year apparently the average for all subjects was 1:4 I think, but does vary a lot.

Hey this is probably pretty useless but can someone tell me on average how many people one have to compete with e.g. 1:3 means you have to compete with 3 other people with one place obviously... is it likely to be higher than 1:3 for both universities?

You are right, it is VERY USELESS. This figure really has no significance and can not help very much. At best, it will give you a vague idea of how popular a subject is in general at the university.

Some people turn up at their interview expecting to only find another 4 people per place being interviewed, but in reality there is 30 people competing for 3 spaces. Others turn up and find that there is only 4 people being interviewed for 2 places.

If this ratio really interests you, you should be interested in finding out the ratio at college level, as this would be more useful. That said, the winter pool does tend to (or is supposed to?) even out much of the disparity, so ratios of this kind are not especially useful when deciding college/subject.

yea well said

anyways, i just also found out that you might have got your ratios wrong, because one of the admissions tutor told me that 3:1 means 3 people for one place, and your thing means a person has 3 competitor? very strange, anyways, either case you shouldnt care about these things too much as mentallyill said