Oxford Law, in numbers.
Five cycles. 1,814 applicants. Every figure from a primary FOI release.
Oxford Law
OVERVIEW
Headline numbers
Oxford received 2,115 applications and made 252 offers for the 2025-26 cycle — an offer rate of 11.9%.[12] The cohort is 8.4-8.8x oversubscribed and the offer rate has sat in the 11-15% band for five consecutive cycles.
2025-26 OFFER RATE
Three numbers worth fixing in your head
25
Applicant average
The whole 2025 pool averaged 24.51 on Section A.[1] If your diagnostic is 26 you are at the median of everyone who applied — that is not enough.
31
Offer-holder average
Offer holders averaged 30.92 on Section A and 65.29 on the essay.[1] A finished score of 31 puts you at the centre of the offer distribution.
11.9%
Overall offer rate
Across the 2025-26 cycle, 252/2,115 of applicants received an offer.[12] The rate is roughly 1-in-8.
The Oxford Law funnel
Every cycle since 2021-22 in one frame. Applications hold steady around 2,050-2,150;[8][9][10][11][12] offers sit at 240-252; the shortlist size never strays far from 600. The 2025-26 cycle is the lowest offer rate in the five-year window.[12]
Figure 1 · Five-cycle funnel
Applications
Shortlisted
Offers
Applications, shortlist, offers
| Cycle | Apps | Shortlisted | Offers | Shortlist rate | Offer rate | App MCT | SL MCT | Off MCT | Off essay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 2046 | 603 | 228 | 29.5% | 11.1% | 22.5 | 27.03 | 28.25 | 64.05 |
| 2022 | 2141 | 666 | 240 | 31.1% | 11.2% | 24.2 | 28.3 | 30 | 65.7 |
| 2023-24 | 2125 | 598 | 241 | 28.1% | 11.3% | — | 29.46 | 31 | 64.94 |
| 2024-25 | 2061 | 641 | 247 | 31.1% | 12.0% | 24.5 | 29.18 | 30.96 | 65.41 |
| 2025-26 | 2115 | 630 | 252 | 29.8% | 11.9% | 24.94 | 29.37 | 30.48 | 65.21 |
What the trend reveals
- Applications stable around 2,050-2,150. No dramatic year-on-year volatility — demand is steady.[8][9][10][11][12]
- Offers stable around 240-252. Capacity is set by the tutorial system, not by applicant quality.
- Shortlist rate 28-32%. Roughly one in three applicants is invited to interview. The 2025-26 figure of 29.8% is in line.
- Offer-holder MCT average has crept up. 28.25 (2021-22) → 30.0 (2022) → 31.0 (2023-24) → 30.96 (2024-25) → 30.48 (2025-26).
- Essay average is stable. The No More Marking platform anchors the distribution from year to year.[4]
2008 to 2025
Applications climbed from 1,291 (2008) to 1,814 (2025), a rise of 41%.[7][1] Offers have barely moved — the implicit acceptance rate has fallen from roughly 20% in the late 2000s to 12.95% in 2025.
Figure 2 · Long-run trend
Applications
Offers
App MCQ avg
Offer MCQ avg
2008 to 2025: applications climb, offers stay flat, MCQ averages drift
Two patterns
Pattern 1 — the offer ceiling. Oxford's tutorial system caps cohort size at roughly 240-250 students across all 30+ colleges. Tutorial capacity, not applicant quality, sets the intake. Applications climbing from 1,300 to 1,800 means the marginal applicant in 2025 faces a tighter funnel than the marginal applicant in 2014 — even if their LNAT score is identical.
Pattern 2 — the MCQ gap is what matters. Applicant-pool MCQ averages have drifted: 23.1 (2014) → 21.8 (2018) → 24.51 (2025). The offer-holder average has held more stable: 28 (2014) → 30.92 (2025). Test difficulty has fluctuated; what hasn't is the gap between offer holders and the rest. That gap (5-7 marks) is the bar.
Don't be misled by year-on-year drift. If the 2024 offer-holder average is 31.0 and the 2025 is 30.5, that's noise, not a trend. Build your prep target off the most recent solid figure — currently around 30-31 for an offer-holder MCQ — and don't try to time the cycle.
Applications per place
The University's central admissions report aggregates 2022-2024 cycles to give a steady-state view of Oxford's most over-subscribed courses. Law (M100) sits at 10 applications per place — the 7th-most-oversubscribed of Oxford's 25 largest courses.[14]
The figure puts Law alongside the other most-competitive Oxford courses. Economics & Management (~17 apps/place), Computer Science (~14), and Medicine (~11) are above; Law sits in the next tier with Maths and PPE. By the 2025-26 cycle Law's ratio had risen slightly to 8.81,[12] but the structural picture has been steady for a decade.
The course is large enough that a strong-on-paper candidate isn't competing against a tiny boutique pool: year-to-year variation is small and the bar is institutional. The cohort is also large enough to be redistributed via the pool — roughly 40% of offers in any given cycle come from a college other than the candidate's first choice (see the Interview page for detail).
Who applies, who gets in
Oxford's Annual Admissions Statistical Report 2025 publishes Law-specific demographics aggregated across the 2022-2024 cycles.[14] Two findings stand out: state-school students make up 76.6% of UK admitted Law students — among the highest of any Oxford course — and 21.3% are from POLAR 1-2 (areas of low HE progression), the highest of any of Oxford's 25 largest courses.
| Group | UK Apps | UK Offers | UK Admitted | Offer rate | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State school | 3,137 | 394 | 341 | 12.6% | 10.9% |
| Independent school | 746 | 110 | 104 | 14.7% | 13.9% |
| ACORN 4-5 (most disadvantaged) | 941 | 126 | 101 | 13.4% | 10.7% |
| POLAR 1-2 (low HE progression) | 901 | 123 | 102 | 13.7% | 11.3% |
| FSM eligible | 404 | 58 | 42 | 14.4% | 10.4% |
| Female | 2,779 | 328 | 295 | 11.8% | 10.6% |
| Male | 1,361 | 212 | 184 | 15.6% | 13.5% |
| BME | 1,663 | 189 | 168 | 11.4% | 10.1% |
| Asian | 834 | 85 | 76 | —% | —% |
| Black African / Caribbean | 330 | 41 | 33 | —% | —% |
| Mixed Heritage | 364 | 43 | 39 | —% | —% |
The convergence at the offer stage
Once you reach the FSC review, offer rates compress across socio-economic groups: state school 12.6%, independent 14.7%, ACORN 4-5 13.4%, FSM-eligible 14.4%, POLAR 1-2 13.7%.[14] The 2-3 percentage-point gap between state and independent schools is real but small. The shortlisting algorithm's contextualisation does most of the work here: ranking GCSEs against school performance neutralises much of the raw gap between school types.[6]
The gender gap is wider. Male applicants have a 15.6% offer rate vs female 11.8%. The gap appears in the LNAT MCT data too: 2021-22 male offer holders averaged 28.9 vs female 27.7 on Section A.[8] Whether the gap is selection-side, test-side, or shortlisting-side is unclear from public data.
The international cohort
In 2025-26, 31.73% of applicants were Overseas (non-UK / non-EU), 9.08% EU, and 59.2% Home.[12] The cGCSE methodology works less neatly for non-UK qualifications; Oxford uses a separate contextualisation for international applicants, which they don't publish in detail. International applicants face the same LNAT bar and the same interview process; the verification of school context is less granular.
Sources cited on this page
Every numerical claim above ends in a [n] superscript that links here. Each link opens the primary FOI attachment, faculty-published report, or official course page.
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[12]
Faculty of Law — Annual Admissions Report 2025-26 REPORT
First publication of the 80%/10%/10% (cGCSE/MCT/essay) shortlisting weighting. Without-cGCSE 50/50 fallback. Spreadsheet-of-strong-candidates rescue mechanism.
-
[14]
University of Oxford — Annual Admissions Statistical Report 2025 REPORT
Demographic baseline aggregated across 2022-2024. UK applications, offers, admits by school type, ACORN, POLAR, gender, ethnicity.
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[1]
FOI 202506/653 — Per-applicant LNAT data, 2025 cycle FOI
Per-applicant Section A, essay, college, and offer outcome for all 1,814 applicants to BA Jurisprudence in the 2025 cycle.
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[8]
Faculty of Law — Annual Admissions Report 2021-22 REPORT
Faculty-level publication. Funnel, LNAT averages, demographic split, and shortlisting weighting for the 2021-22 cycle.
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[9]
Faculty of Law — Report on the 2022 Admissions Round REPORT
Funnel, LNAT min/max and average ranges, second-interview activity for 2022. First explicit publication of the 3-point rank methodology.
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[10]
Faculty of Law — Annual Admissions Report 2023-24 REPORT
Course-1 / Course-2 split, super-LNAT pull-in rule, bGCSE pull-in rule, second-interview redistribution detail.
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[11]
Faculty of Law — Annual Admissions Report 2024-25 REPORT
1-5 interview scoring scale, GCSE-shortlisted vs GCSE-offered means, six-criterion tutor rubric, redistribution priority for deprived backgrounds.
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[4]
FOI 20210901/4 — LNAT essay marking criteria FOI
Oxford Information Compliance Team disclosure of the No More Marking platform criteria distinguishing high-mark from low-mark essays.
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[7]
Armstrong FOI 20190927/1 — Long-run aggregate (2008–2018) FOI
Aggregated cycle-by-cycle Oxford Law applications, offers, and LNAT averages from 2008 to 2018.
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[2]
FOI 202307/740 — Per-college M100 LNAT totals, 2022 & 2023 cycles FOI
Per-college applications, shortlisting, and offers for the 2022 and 2023 admissions cycles.
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[3]
FOI 202401/89 — Law Statistics 2024 cycle FOI
Per-college funnel and LNAT score averages for the 2024 admissions cycle.
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[6]
FOI 202307/668 — cGCSE methodology refusal FOI
Refusal under FOIA s.43(2) to disclose the exact contextualised GCSE formula. Confirms cGCSE adjusts raw GCSE record against the school's KS4 attainment baseline.