Durham Law, in numbers.
2024/25 cycle. 2,855 applicants. 1,405 offers (1,475 including 70 alternative-programme referrals). Drawn from Durham's published applications data and the OfS Transparency returns.
Durham Law
OVERVIEW
Headline numbers
In the 2024/25 cycle, Durham Law received 2,855 applications across Home and Overseas streams and made 1,475 offers to its programme — a combined offer rate of 52%.[1] The two streams are recruited separately and look very different: Home/Islands ran at 32% to programme; Overseas/EU at 80%.
2024/25 OFFER RATE
Three numbers worth fixing in your head
32%
Home offer rate
540 of 1,770 Home/Islands applicants were offered the Law programme in 2024/25.[1] Roughly 1-in-3 — much wider than Oxford or Cambridge, much tighter than the typical Durham course.
80%
Overseas offer rate
865 of 1,085 Overseas/EU applicants were offered Law — Durham runs two effectively separate streams.[1] If you're an international applicant the funnel works very differently.
A*AA
Standard offer
Durham asks A*AA at A-Level (or 38 IB points with 6,6,6 at Higher) for M101 Law.[2] See the Grades page for contextual variants.
The 2024/25 funnel
Durham publishes a department-by-department applications table each cycle. Law sits with Economics, Computer Science, Engineering and Management as one of the programmes whose Home offer rate runs well below the institutional average. Most Durham departments offer to 85-99% of Home applicants;[1] Law's 32% makes it visibly competitive.
Figure 1 · Home vs Overseas Law funnel, 2024/25
Applications
Offers (programme)
Alternative offers
Durham Law
Durham University — Undergraduate Applications 2024/25 Cycle (Home/Islands and Overseas/EU pages).[1]
| Stream | Applications | Offered programme | % Programme | Alternative offers | % Any offer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home / Islands | 1,770 | 540 | 31% | 25 | 32% |
| Overseas / EU | 1,085 | 865 | 80% | 45 | 84% |
| Combined | 2,855 | 1,405 | 49% | 70 | 52% |
How to read this
- Two separate funnels. Durham explicitly notes "separate recruitment streams for Home/Islands and Overseas/EU students."[1] Treat the 32% Home figure as the relevant one if you're a UK applicant.
- "Alternative programme" is small. 25 Home applicants were referred to a different course — Durham's institutional fallback for near-miss candidates. It's a 1% adjustment, not a major route.
- Law is one of Durham's more competitive courses. 32% Home offer rate puts Law alongside Economics (50%), Computer Science (60%), Finance (43%), and Engineering (90%) — Law sits at the tighter end.[1]
- No interview filter. Unlike Oxford or Cambridge, the 32% offer rate is the whole story — there's no further shortlist-to-interview step. See .
The 32% figure is roughly comparable to UCL Law or KCL Law on offer rate, not Oxbridge. The cohort sizes are different — Durham takes around 250 home students per cycle — but the selectivity at the offer stage is in the same band as the London law schools.
Year-on-year
Durham's annual Office for Students Transparency returns don't publish course-level applications data — they aggregate at the institutional level.[3] For 2018/19, the institutional Full-Time funnel sat at 19,950 applications → 71% offered → 18% accepted across all undergraduate programmes. From 2019/20 onwards the OfS dropped the applications/offers split from the Transparency tables and only reports attainment.[3]
That means the only multi-year Law-specific time series we have is the snapshot publication Durham issued for the 2024/25 cycle.[1] Earlier per-department cycles aren't published on Durham's central site. [DATA GAP: per-cycle Law applications for 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24.]
Figure 2 · Institutional 2018/19 — Full-Time applications
Applications
Offer rate
Acceptance rate
Durham 2018/19
Durham Transparency Return 2019, Table 1a (Full-Time, 2018/19 entrants). Institution-wide; Law-specific equivalents are not published in the Transparency returns.[3]
Two indirect readings. First, Durham's offer rate compresses tightly across socio-economic groups: IMD 1-2 (69.1%) and IMD 3-5 (72.0%) are within three points.[3] The acceptance gap is larger — IMD 3-5 students convert at 18% vs IMD 1-2 at 15% — which is mostly about whether students hold and meet the offer, not whether Durham makes them one.
Second, the gender pattern is the opposite of Oxford's. Female applicants have a higher Durham offer rate (75.4%) than male (67.7%) at the institution level.[3] Whether that holds for Law specifically isn't published.
Who applies, who gets in
Durham's Transparency returns publish attainment by demographic for cohorts that have graduated — a proxy for cohort composition, not a snapshot of applicants. In the 2021-22 qualifier cohort, 95% of White students and 93% of ethnic-minority students got a 2:1 or above; the IMD 1-2 group hit 89%, IMD 3-5 96%.[4]
| Characteristic | Split | 2017-18 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethnicity | White | 94% | 96% | 96% | 95% |
| Ethnicity | Ethnic minorities | 91% | 94% | 95% | 93% |
| EIMD 2019 | Quintile 1-2 (most deprived) | 89% | 94% | 92% | 89% |
| EIMD 2019 | Quintile 3-5 | 94% | 97% | 97% | 96% |
| Sex | Female | 95.3% | 97.2% | 97.7% | 96.8% |
| Sex | Male | 91.3% | 94.9% | 94.5% | 92.1% |
What this tells us
Attainment at Durham compresses tightly across demographics — the 2:1 rate sits in the 89-97% band for every group the OfS reports. A five-to-seven point gap between IMD 1-2 and IMD 3-5 students appears in every cycle and is consistent with the national pattern.[4]
What's not published — and would be much more useful for an applicant — is the applicant-side breakdown by school type, POLAR4 quintile, and ethnicity at the Law-course level. Durham doesn't publish that detail centrally, and the OfS Transparency template doesn't require it. [DATA GAP: Law-specific applicant demographics by school type, POLAR4, sex, ethnicity.]
If you're applying from a POLAR4 quintile 1 or 2 area, look at Supported Progression. Durham's contextual-offer scheme drops the typical offer by one A-Level grade (A*AA → ABB for Law in some cases). See the Grades page for the eligibility rules.
Sources cited on this page
Every numerical claim above ends in a [n] superscript that links here. Click any link to open the primary published source from which the figure was retrieved.
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[1]
Durham — Undergraduate Applications 2024/25 Cycle REPORT
Department-by-department applications, programme offers, and alternative-programme offers for the 2024/25 cycle. Separate Home/Islands and Overseas/EU pages.
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[2]
Durham Law School — M101 LLB Law course page COURSE
Official course entry. Standard A-Level offer A*AA, IB 38 with 6,6,6 at Higher, contextual offer reference, and course structure.
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[3]
OfS Transparency Return 2019 — University of Durham (Table 1a, 2018/19) DATASET
Full-Time mode applications, offer rates, acceptance rates by ethnicity, EIMD quintile, and sex. Institution-wide; Law-specific subsets are not published.
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[4]
OfS Transparency Returns 2019-2023 — University of Durham (Attainment tables) DATASET
Percentage of classified first degrees at 2:1 or above by characteristic, 2017-18 through 2021-22 qualifiers. Institution-wide.