Slightly confused about some university statistics' representation

Okay. Quite possibly a very silly question -

To ask it, I'll just use an example.

Manchester university according to google has an acceptance rate of 74.3%

Yet most of their courses seem to have an amount of applications per place of something like 4 or some even 10..

This clearly doesn't add up, I assume there's a simple explanation?

Thank-you!

x

That's probably the offer rate not the acceptance rate. Universities give out a lot more offers than they have places.

Couple of things:

First, competition for places and acceptance rates vary massively from course to course. Generally speaking, law and medicine will almost always have significantly lower acceptance rates than, computer science or media studies because of a high number of applicants.

In regards to the high offer rate when compared to applications per place, it is not uncommon to give out more offers than there are places. For example, let's say 100 people are applying for 10 places to read history at Manchester. Manchester give out 70 offers. 40 of those with offers are might not firm/insure Manchester; after all, it's only one of their 5 choices and Manchester.

That leaves 30 offer holders for 10 places. Maybe 10 offer-holders have Manchester as their insurance choice, and come results day they get into their firm, not taking their place at Manchester.

Now there's only 20 offer holders for 10 places. Let's say 8 do not meet their A-Level offer. That leaves 12 offer-holders with 10 places. Universities are no longer limited in how many students they can take on, so they take the 12 students (and the extra £54,000 in tuition fees).

Btw, this is not a reflection on Manchester, it's just an explanation as to how statistics can appear like this. I've known courses like maths at Warwick to give out loads of offers for relatively few places because so many people miss their offer on results day.