We all know the University of Oxford has some incredible alumni, including world-renowned scientists, grace its halls, but the question is how many students are currently at the university?
Among its alum University counts 26 British Prime Ministers, 50 Nobel Prize leaders, dozens of international heads of state and 120 Olympic medallists. That’s not even half of the famous Oxonians over the hundreds of years the university has been in existence and there’s likely to be more in the future as more students complete their degrees there every year.
How Many Students In Oxford University?
We’ll never be sure how many of the current students will be the next Albert Einstein, Professor Stephen Hawking, or even Harry Potter’s Emma Watson but there’s a good chance some of them will be pretty successful with how many students go to the university.
According to the uni’s statistics, There are more than 25,000 students at Oxford. That sounds a lot, but that’s in the whole university and broken down there are around 12,510 undergraduates and 13,044 postgraduates.
Oxford roughly has an equal number of men and women attending the university. Of the 12,510 undergraduates, 6,118 are men and 6,392 are women. Of the graduate students, the breakdown is similar 7,018 are men and 6,026 are women.
Oxford University offers 48 undergraduate degrees, of which medicine is the most popular subject, with over 1,000 students currently enrolled. The least popular at the moment seems to be geology as there is currently only one undergraduate enrolled – well, I suppose that student will have a lot of one-to-one learning.
The university boasts diversity in its student body and this is displayed through the 160 countries and territories represented among the Oxford student body. The largest groups of international students are those from:
- USA – 1,606
- China – 1,556
- Germany – 747
- Canada – 427
- Hong Kong (SAR) – 366
- India – 335
- Singapore – 309
- Australia – 299
- Italy – 285
- France – 260
- Poland – 203
International students make up 45% of Oxford students. 65% of all graduate students are from outside the UK, as are 23% of all undergraduates. However, the majority of undergraduate students are from the UK.
This is just the number of full-time students, every year more than 15,000 students enrol on courses at the Department for Continuing Education which offers online courses across a wide range of subjects with course formats which include weekly classes, flexible short courses, single-day and weekend events, lecture series and Oxford qualifications which can all be done part-time, partially in person, or via distance learning.
What is Oxford University acceptance rate?
One thing is for sure each student will have worked incredibly hard to get on to their chosen courses as each year the entry to undergraduate courses at Oxford continues to be very competitive: there are usually only around 3,300 places, and over 24,000 people applied to start in 2021.
That means Oxford receives, on average, over seven applications for each available place and, according to College Gazette, the undergraduate acceptance rate is around 17%, or one in six. This may sound harsh but it’s still not nearly as rigorous as Harvard, Columbia, or Yale, in the US, whose acceptance rates hover around 5%.
For 2020/21 entry, Oxford received over 34,500 applications for some 6,675 postgraduate places over the 350 courses available. This means the postgraduate acceptance rate was slightly better at 19.3%, or, almost, one in five.
How large is Oxford University?
So where do they put all these students who make it into the one in six successful applicants? Well, on one of the world’s oldest English-speaking university’s 39 colleges. That’s right Oxford University is made up of 39 colleges with independence and self-rule associated with the central University.
They were set up within a kind of federal structure. The university also has six permanent private halls, which are similar to colleges, though most are smaller and were historically founded by Christian groups.
Also, chances are you won’t find a larger university or college campus like that of Magdalen College anywhere else, which is probably the most well-known college in Oxford.
But for how large Oxford uni actually is the university town is 288 hectares (710 acres) – for reference, this would fit over 350 Olympic-sized swimming pools into it and is more than double the size of the Oxford Brookes campus, which is not part of Oxford University.