Russell Group Universities Offer Rates 2025: Which UK Universities Are Hardest to Get Into?
Introduction “Russell Group universities are all difficult to get into.” I hear this assumption quite often from parents preparing their children's UK university applications. But the latest UCAS data tells a much more interesting story. The 24 Russell Group universities have very different offer rates . In the 2025 admissions cycle, the proportion of applications resulting in an offer ranged from just 15.8% at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to 87.6% at the University of Exeter . Oxford was at 16.1%, Cambridge at 21.4%, Imperial at 25.3% and UCL at 44.2%. That is a remarkable difference. It also means that saying “Russell Group is hard to get into” is simply too broad to be useful. However, there is an even more important point for parents to understand: An offer rate is not the same as an acceptance rate, and neither is the same as your child's personal probability of admission. UCAS provides historical admissions data to help applicants understand...