<p>Are they much less competitive compared to top schools in the States?</p>
<p>Does anyone know the acceptance and yield rates for top schools in UK? Namely Oxbridge, Imperial Colleges and LSE...</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>The acceptance rates vary by course, but most are under 40% at top schools. Law and medicine are especially competitive, with acceptance rates usually below 20%.</p>
<p>And don't they go into law and medical school right from high school?</p>
<p>I was surprised at the stats at Oxford. For UK students, I think it was 25% acceptance rate, though it's not like here, where people apply to reaches and super reaches. If they don't think they have a good chance, they just don't apply. </p>
<p>Stats from a year or two ago said that for Americans, it was about 1 in 5 I believe... but that's bound to go down to at least 1 in 6.</p>
<p>Other schools, like LSE (London School of Economics) can be insanely difficult for some subjects. Int'l Relations was 1 in 20 or something like that..heh which is why I'm not applying</p>
<p>are you sure that the 1 in 20 is acceptance rate?</p>
<p>it sounds more like matriculation rate.</p>
<p>It's pretty easy to find admissions stats for most of the schools on their websites- according to LSE, 1160 people applied for the International Relations course in 2005 and 72 matriculated.</p>
<p>so that is not the admission rate...</p>
<p>matriculate rate doesn't help me at all unless you give me the yield rate.</p>
<p>For Oxbridge, it really depends what course you want to study. It's easier for American students to be accepted onto Arts/Humanities courses than Science courses (this is because of differences in UK/US high school curricula). The Oxford website gives average application to admission percentages for the last three years for most subjects.</p>
<p>Bear in mind you can't apply to both Oxford and Cambridge unless you are an Organ Scholar, and you have to apply for a specific course. It's not easy to switch courses once you've matriculated.</p>
<p>when i emailed the lse they stated that they give out approx. 2.6 offers for a place. so you take the 72 places and multiply by 2.6 and the admission rate turns to about 16-17%</p>
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when i emailed the lse they stated that they give out approx. 2.6 offers for a place. so you take the 72 places and multiply by 2.6 and the admission rate turns to about 16-17%
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An "offer" as UK universities use the term is a conditional acceptance. Usually the "conditions" as based on predicted A-level grades for UK students. Foreign students get conditions based on AP/IB or the high school graduation grades in their particular country. When the A-level grades come out in August (which is a big national event here. The top students appear in newspapers and stuff.) those who don't meet thier conditions are rejected. So when LSE says they give out 2.6 offers per place, I think they mean for 72 places they give out 187 offers. 115 of those students will either fail to get their grades or choose to go elsewhere. I expect they have MANY more than 187 applications! At LSE the number of offers is probably inflated due to the high number (I'd guess around 50%) of applications by international students, who are much more likely to turn them down due to cost and better (economically, educationally and practially) offers elsewhere. Oxford gives out about 11 conditional offers for every 10 places. So they expect 1 person in 11 to not make their grades or turn them down. But only about 10% of these offers are to international students. UK students almost never turn them down. I'd expect the yield rate to be about 98% (the graduation rate is about that).</p>
<p>About 20% of Oxbridge applicants get a conditional offer. But remember you can only apply to either Oxford or Cambridge. This is very variable across subjects though. Chemistry is the least popular subject in the UK and at Oxford I know the acceptance rate is close to 50%. But bear in mind that there isn't much concept of reach, match and safety schools in the UK. Most people look at what A-level grades they are likely to get and then apply to 6 unis (the maximum allowed) who have average offers around those grades. Applying to Oxbridge if it will be a "reach" to get 3 grade As or more is just a waste of a spot on the application form. Also, it is technically illegal to admit people through any kind of "legacy" (people in the UK are horrified when they discover this is possible in the US and see it as a terrible injustice) and the people who get into Ivys through having a "hook" of amazing ECs would also be unlikely to apply to Oxbridge as ECs are ignored (though it is amazing how many Olympic rowers suddenly have a yen to do a masters at Oxford!).</p>
<p>And it is worth pointing out that the 50% acceptance for chemistry at Oxford doesn't mean it is easy to get into. The requirement of top grades and very good performance at interview is still there. It is just that if you can meet that absolute level of achievement the competition for a place is less. But that "absolute level" is essential; the necessary standard isn't lowered.</p>
<p>It's also worth pointing out that applicants to Oxford and Cambridge are <em>extremely</em> self-selecting. You have to have both the past academic achievement and the intellectual drive, as well as what was described to me as 'fluid intelligence' - the ability to modify ideas and extrapolate information from limited sources. Some secondary schools will regularly tell students not to apply - at my secondary school, you had to be 'approved' before they would let you put an application in.</p>
<p>The biggest hurdle for U.S. applicants is that the entry-level requirements for admission into UK universities are significantly higher than the average American High School senior's credentials. For example, to study engineering in Cambridge or in Imperial, one typically needs 3 A-Level certificates at grade A in Mathematics, Physics and a third related subject (preferably Further Maths). In U.S. terms, that would be equivalent to getting a grade 5 in 3 AP Exams including Calculus BC and Physics C. On top of that, many colleges in Cambridge also require engineering candidates to take additional reasoning or math tests. Generally speaking, U.S. students are at a great disadvantage compared to domestic UK and other EU applicants because they have only 12 years of pre-university schooling as opposed to 13, which is the norm in most European countries. BTW, despite an additional pre-university school year, undergraduate engineering degrees in the UK (MEng) now require 4-year courses, with 4th-year classes (e.g. Part III of the Engineering Tripos at Cambridge) being taught at a level that is comparable to graduate-level (M.S.) classes in the US. The same applies to most British undergrad degrees in Physics or Mathematics nowadays.</p>
<p>^My friend got into UCL for ChemE and they required at least 4 in 4 APs (he was only doing 4). I don't know about Oxbridge though</p>
<p>While what Bruno says is true for science subjects (and languages studied non-ab initio), it's not the case for arts/humanities. </p>
<p>Subjects like PPE, for example, don't actually require any specific knowledge of philosophy, politics or economics in advance - although obviously you'd have to know the generalities or presumably you wouldn't be applying. It's the same situation with some languages - for example, some Classics courses at Oxford don't actually require you to have studied either Latin or Greek in advance, because they know not all secondary schools can provide it.</p>
<p>sorry can't help I am from Australia have no idea what schools are over there!</p>