Access to Oxford

There is no typical student, and no single Oxford experience. Our students come from every background imaginable. What they do have in common is an ability and motivation for learning and studying. There are currently more than 26,000 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate study at Oxford.  

We are committed to improving opportunities for talented students who have faced disadvantage or are currently under-represented at Oxford, and to ensuring that students with outstanding academic potential from all backgrounds can access our world-leading teaching.

The University has introduced a number of access and outreach initiatives to attract and admit students from all backgrounds and ensure Oxford reflects the breadth and diversity of the UK.

Progress in this area has been made at both undergraduate and graduate level in recent years and we continue to build on this with innovative new access programmes across both undergraduate and graduate admissions. Many colleges and departments in Oxford also run their own dedicated access programmes and events.

We provide a generous range of financial support and funding opportunities to ensure that no one with outstanding academic potential is deterred from studying here because of their background, personal circumstances, or finances.

The University of Oxford has topped the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as the best university in the world for the past eight years. During this period undergraduate students from a wider range of backgrounds than ever have joined the University, including from areas of low progression to higher education and from areas of social and economic disadvantage. This is despite admissions continuing to be increasingly competitive.

We remain committed to long-term progress in this area and continue to build on the outreach and access work already being undertaken across the collegiate University as part of our commitment to support the aspirations of young people in their educational goals, and attract those with the highest academic potential, and from all backgrounds, to Oxford.

Oxford offers a unique experience to its graduate students, including the opportunity to work with leading academics and with world-class libraries, laboratories, museums and collections, across 350 graduate courses. This includes taught and research courses available for full-time and part-time study, from diplomas to doctorates.

We are doing more than ever to increase the number of promising postgraduate students from under-represented and disadvantaged groups and have launched several innovative graduate access schemes in recent years.

A cross-institutional Graduate Access Subcommittee directs efforts to enhance access and participation, including several initiatives to support fair admissions, such as the use of socio-economic and contextual data in the assessment of applications.

2024 Graduate admissions statistics

37,713 applications were received for graduate study at Oxford in the academic year 2023-24, for some 6,702 postgraduate places. The University’s graduate students represent many countries and cultures and are from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds.

Find out more about the 2024 graduate admissions statistics.

Hear from our students, academics and researchers to find out more about what studying at Oxford is really like.