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Is medicine the most competitive course

just wonder. if not what is. what course has the lowest offer rate

Ummm isn't dentistry even more competitive?

But obviously it depends. What do you mean by completive? Lowest offer rate? Lowest amount of places available for that course? etc

EDIT: no scrap that, I forgot about vet med, as @HighOnGoofballs said

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 2

kekedoyouloveme?

i'm not too sure I'm applying to med, it's very competitive, I guess actors/actresses competing for roles in movies is quite competitive same with dancers/singers..

Reply 3

username3978426

Probably is medicine seeing as even people with all A*s get rejected and the process for getting in is so tough

Reply 4

999tigger

It depends what the definition of competitive is. For every candidate maybe, but maybe not per institution.

Reply 5

HighOnGoofballs

No, VetMed is. Veterinary is equal in competitive-ness to Medicine, but there are only 11 universities that do it in the UK so there is tonnes of competition, whereas there are more places for Med students due to there being more universities.

Reply 6

OrangeArcher

Original post by HighOnGoofballs

There are 8 universities that do veterinary medicine in the UK (excluding Ireland - not included in the UK, and any new vet schools that are opening soon)

Reply 7

waleed99

IMO photography is the most competitive course.

Reply 8

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

At what university? For nationwide comparisons, I'm pretty sure only UCAS have the relevant data and I'm not sure they publish such things, so anything else is speculation...

For an individual datum, Cambridge does publish data on success rate for applications to their courses. In 2017, undergraduate entry Medicine at Cambridge had a success rate of 19.2%, slightly below the average across the university of 20.3%. Architecture was the most competitive standard entry course, with just 8.6% success rate, although graduate entry Medicine was the most competitive overall at 5.8% of applications being successful. In total there were 10 subjects (including graduate entry Medicine) at Cambridge which had lower success rates, which included all STEM subjects except Natural Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and Psychology & Behavioural Sciences, and five "arts" subjects (Philosophy, Economics, HSPS, Law, and Architecture). However, Medicine at Cambridge has considerably fewer applications per place than other medical schools due to self selection of applicants.

By comparison, in 2016 Economics with Economic History at LSE had 63 applicants for a single place, with only a 1.6% success rate. Econometrics and Mathematical Economics at the same university/year had 163 applications, of which none were accepted. The most competitive course otherwise at LSE in the year indicated was Politics & International Relations, with a success rate of 4.4%. However, LSE also not infrequently makes offers for other courses (e.g. other joint honours combinations) to unsuccessful applicants, so the candidates may have been successful in getting a place on their first choice of course may still get a place on another at the same university, which may or may not be in or related to their desired subject area.

It's unlikely there is any non-trivial answer to the question, if for no other reason than because I doubt there is any one degree subject offered by every university which would allow anyone to reasonably compare competition ratios and success rates at. In fact I don't even think there is any one subject offered by all of the Russell Group alone; Maths I think is the only one if you count joint honours courses. Additionally an individual subject may be competitive at one/a few universities, and largely uncompetitive elsewhere (e.g. many Economics/Business/Finance courses which are likely to be more competitive at a few "top" universities and less competitive at universities that are not "target universities" for investment banks, which is a goal of many students applying to such courses; similarly Law). As a result, there would be a much wider range of competition ratios for those subjects and so the average gets skewed as a result, despite those subjects potentially existing in something of a two-tier system.

Reply 9

meddad

Original post by tom123h456

just wonder. if not what is. what course has the lowest offer rate

In 2014 an article in the Telegraph quoting their source as UCAS said:

Last summer, universities in Britain received more than 11 applications for every place to study medicine, up from fewer than nine in 2008. It meant the subject was officially the most in-demand discipline at degree level. Dentistry was not far behind, with 9.7 applications per place, while nursing and veterinary medicine both had 9.2 students chasing each place.

Not forgetting, of course, that each applicant applies to 4 Universities, so the competition ratios are actually 25% of those figures.