How do you get into Oxford Law?

How many people apply, and how many get in?

In the 2025-26 admissions round (for entry in 2026), Oxford received 2,115 applications for Law and made 252 offers, an offer rate of 11.9%, or roughly one applicant in eight.^[12] This is the latest round the Faculty has reported on, and as you will see below, the four rounds before it look very similar.

Before going further, it is worth being clear about what these figures can tell you. They describe the whole field, including many candidates whose LNAT scores made an offer unlikely from the start. Your own chances depend far more on your LNAT scores and your contextualised GCSE score, which we cover in the next two chapters.

Has it become harder to get in?

On the Faculty's own figures, it has not become harder in recent years. Across the last five rounds, applications have stayed between about 2,050 and 2,150,^{[8][9][10][11][12]} offers have risen slightly from 228 to 252, and the shortlist has varied between 598 and 666. The 2025-26 offer rate of 11.9% was the second highest of the five; the lowest was 11.1%, in 2021-22.^[8][12]

The same reports give the average LNAT scores for each round:^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Note that the 2024-25 figure of 251 offers includes four deferred offers for entry in 2026, in the same way that the 2025-26 figure includes two deferred offers for 2027.^[11][12]

What these figures mean for you

There are three points worth bearing in mind.

1. The number of places is fixed in advance. Colleges declare their places before selection starts: 241, 236 and 240 places across the 31 participating colleges in the last three rounds.^[10][11][12] The number of offers therefore does not rise in a year when the field happens to be stronger.
2. Most applicants are turned down before interview. Between 28% and 32% of applicants have been shortlisted in each round (29.8% in 2025-26), so roughly seven applicants in ten never reach interview. This is why the LNAT and your GCSEs, which decide the shortlist, deserve so much of your attention.
3. Offer holders' Section A scores have crept up. Their average rose from 28.25 in 2021-22 to around 31 in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and was 30.48 in 2025-26. The essay average, on the other hand, has hardly changed: offer holders averaged between 64.05 and 65.7 in every round.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

How has the picture changed since 2008?

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests let us look further back. Applications rose from 1,291 in 2008 to 1,858 in 2018,^[7] and have stayed at roughly that level since, with 1,812 for 2025 entry.^[24] Offers, however, have hardly moved, so the share of applicants receiving an offer has fallen from about one in five in the late 2000s to about one in eight today.

Note that the two series in the chart are not counted on quite the same basis. The figures for 2008 to 2018 include Law with Law Studies in Europe,^[7] while those from 2022 onwards count Law (M100) alone,^[24] which is one reason the later offer numbers look lower. For both courses together, the Faculty reports 2,125 applications and 241 offers for 2024 entry, and 2,061 applications and 251 offers for 2025 entry.^[10][11] We suggest reading the chart for the general direction and taking exact figures from the table above. On the M100 count, the offer rate stayed between 11% and 13% in each year from 2022 to 2025.^[24]

What Section A score should you aim for?

The same FOI releases give average Section A scores for most of these years. The applicant average has moved up and down, from 23.1 in 2014 to 21.8 in 2018 and 24.51 in 2025, and the offer-holder average has moved with it, from 28 in 2014 to 27.1 in 2018 and 30.92 in 2025.^[7][1] For 2022 and 2023, applicants averaged 22.75 and 24.32, and offer holders 28.34 and 30.06.^[30][29][31] No applicant average has been released for 2024, when offer holders averaged 30.8.^[25]

In every one of these years, offer holders averaged roughly 4 to 6.5 marks more than applicants as a whole. Because the test varies a little in difficulty from year to year, we recommend measuring your practice scores against this gap and not against a single year's figure. In practical terms, a target of around 30 to 31 puts you at the offer-holder average of recent rounds.

How competitive is Law compared with other Oxford courses?

The University's own admissions report combines the 2023 to 2025 admissions years. On that measure, Law (counted together with Law with Law Studies in Europe) had 10.0 applicants per place, the sixth highest of Oxford's 25 largest courses.^[14]

For comparison, Economics and Management had 18.8 applicants per place, Computer Science 14.8, Biomedical Sciences 12.0, Mathematics 10.4 and Mathematics and Computer Science 10.3, while Medicine was just below Law at 9.4.^[14] The Faculty counts slightly differently: it reports 8.81 candidates for each place declared at the start of the 2025-26 round,^[12] and between 8.73 and 8.92 in each of the three rounds before it.^[9][10][11]

Because the course is large, these figures change little from year to year, so a sudden jump in competition is unlikely. Note also that you are not competing for one college's places alone. Shortlisted candidates who are not reserved by the college they applied to are redistributed before interview,^[12] and 44.4% of offers in 2025-26 came from a college other than the candidate's first choice.^[16] We explain how this works in the Interview chapter.

Who applies, and who gets in?

Oxford's Annual Admissions Statistical Report 2026 breaks down UK applicants to Law (together with Law with Law Studies in Europe) for the 2023 to 2025 admissions years combined.^[14] Two figures stand out. State-school students made up 76.7% of UK students admitted to Law, compared with between 41.9% and 84.8% across Oxford's 25 largest courses, and 27.2% came from less advantaged areas (IMD quintiles 1 and 2), the third-highest share of the 25.

Does your background affect your chances?

As you can see from the table, offer rates are fairly close across groups: 12.9% for state-school applicants, 15.5% for independent-school applicants, 13.2% for those from less advantaged areas and 14.2% for those eligible for free school meals.^[14] Applicants from independent schools did receive offers at a rate 2.6 percentage points higher than applicants from state schools. Note, however, that in 2025-26 the shortlist was drawn up from a rank built on contextualised GCSE scores and the two LNAT scores, and that the selection committee gave further consideration to candidates from the most deprived backgrounds who had done well compared with others at their school.^[12]

An FOI release for Law (M100) breaks the 2025 cycle down by school type, this time including international applicants. State-school applicants made 49.1% of applications and received 51.3% of offers, and independent-school applicants made 10.5% and received 13.2%. The rest were classed as other schools (20.8% of applications and 15.8% of offers) or overseas (19.5% and 19.7%).^[24]

There is also a gap between men and women. Male applicants had an offer rate of 15.4%, against 12.5% for female applicants.^[14] A similar gap appears in Section A scores: in 2021-22, male offer holders averaged 28.9 and female offer holders 27.7.^[8] The published data does not show at which stage the gap opens.

Applying from outside the UK

If you are applying from outside the UK, you will be one of many. In 2025-26, 31.73% of applicants were classed as Overseas and 9.08% as EU, with 59.2% Home.^[12] The Faculty's report describes no separate contextualisation for international applicants. Candidates without a cGCSE score (which includes anyone who did not sit GCSEs) were ranked separately on the two LNAT scores, equally weighted, and decisions were then adjusted individually in the light of their school qualifications.^[12] Apart from this, international applicants sit the same LNAT and go through the same interviews.

For Law (M100) alone, an FOI release gives the 2025 cycle by domicile. UK applicants made 1,127 applications, 395 were shortlisted and 159 received offers (14.1%); international applicants made 686 applications, 175 were shortlisted and 75 received offers (10.9%).^[25]