Official admissions statistics: how Chinese applicants fare at six UK universities
Imperial, LSE, UCL, Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh each publish their undergraduate applications, offers and intake, and most break them down by nationality, domicile or fee status. These pages set out those official figures as published and compare the offer rate per application for the China-related group with all applicants. Nothing is imputed or estimated, and every number carries its cycle and its definition.
Six universities at a glance (latest cycle)
Each row is the latest cycle the university has published. Both columns are summed from the official tables, and the rate is offers ÷ applications (per application). The comparison group is defined differently at each university, so read the label: nationality, domicile and fee status are not the same thing.
| University | Cycle | All applicants | Comparison group | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applications | Offers | Offer rate | Defined by | Applications | Offers | Offer rate | ||
| Imperial | 2025 entry (UCAS cycle) | 32,793 | 7,506 | 22.9% | Primary nationality: China (mainland) | 8,415 | 1,731 | 20.6% |
| LSE | 2025/26 academic year | 29,651† | 4,769 | 16.1% | Nationality: Chinese (mainland) | 4,099† | 764† | 18.6% |
| UCL | 2024/25 UCAS cycle | 81,775† | 28,422† | 34.8% | Nationality: Chinese (mainland) | 17,839† | 7,406† | 41.5% |
| Cambridge | 2025 cycle | 22,513 | 4,893 | 21.7% | Country of domicile: China (mainland) | 2,900 | 360 | 12.4% |
| Oxford | 2025 cycle | 23,329 | 3,891 | 16.7% | Domicile: outside the UK and EU‡ | 7,600 | 784 | 10.3% |
| Edinburgh | 2025 cycle | 68,851† | 36,180† | 52.5% | Fee status: Overseas | 30,217† | 18,445† | 61.0% |
- How the totals are built: Imperial = sum of departments; LSE = sum of undergraduate programmes (General Course excluded); UCL = sum of undergraduate course codes in its Freedom of Information response FOI 025-431, including study-abroad and Grad Dip codes; Cambridge = the report's total and its “China” domicile row; Oxford = the report's university total and its non-EU domicile row; Edinburgh = all selection areas across the three fee statuses, with Overseas fee status as the comparison group.
- † Totals exclude cells the university suppressed (5 or fewer each): LSE (excl. 9 suppressed); UCL (excl. 340 suppressed); Edinburgh (excl. 16 suppressed). The rate is total offers ÷ total applications, so it may be slightly low.
- ‡ Oxford does not publish figures for Chinese applicants by nationality or by course. Its report gives, for the 2023–2025 cycles combined, 6,025 applications from applicants domiciled in China and 559 students admitted.
Browse by university
- Imperial College London19 departments · by nationality · 2021–2025See the data
- London School of Economics and Political Science51 programmes · nationality and domicile · 2020/21–2025/26See the data
- University College London358 course codes · by nationality · 2024/25See the data
- University of Cambridge33 courses · 2013–2025 · China by domicileSee the data
- University of OxfordBy domicile · 2021–2025 · applicants per placeSee the data
- University of Edinburgh87 selection areas · by fee status · 2024–2025See the data
How to read these numbers
- Three ratios: offer rate = offers ÷ applications; entrant (or confirmed-place, or acceptance) rate = intake ÷ applications; applicants per place = applications ÷ places (Oxford). All of them are per application.
- Nationality ≠ domicile ≠ fee status: Imperial, LSE and UCL report nationality; LSE also reports domicile; Cambridge and Oxford report domicile; Edinburgh reports fee status. Groups defined in different ways cannot be compared directly, and every group on these pages is labelled.
- Suppression:universities replace counts of 5 and under (or under 5) with an asterisk, shown here as <5. Suppressed cells are left out of totals and no rate is computed from them.
- Per application, not per person: one person can send applications to more than one course at the same university (for example at LSE), and the figures count applications.
- A low rate does not mean a weak course: popular courses attract many applicants, so their offer rates are low; small courses swing from year to year. Read the rate together with the number of applications.
Citation and reuse
To cite these figures, copy the line below:
Wisesprout, 'Official admissions statistics: how Chinese applicants fare at six UK universities', compiled from Imperial College London, LSE, UCL, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and University of Edinburgh data, accessed 2026-10-29, https://wisesprout.co.uk/en/admissions-data
- You are free to quote or republish this page with attribution to Wisesprout and a link to this page.
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- The underlying figures belong to the universities, and each source is cited on this page.
Where do these numbers come from?
All of them come from files the universities publish themselves: Imperial's undergraduate admissions statistics, LSE's Planning Division dashboard of applications, offers and entrants, UCL's application data PDF and a Freedom of Information response, Cambridge's annual undergraduate admissions reports, Oxford's annual admissions statistical report and Edinburgh's admissions statistics by fee status. They were accessed in October 2026. Nothing is estimated or filled in: a figure the university did not publish stays blank.
Is the offer rate my chance of getting an offer?
No. The rates here are offers per application, not the chance that any one person gets an offer, and different groups of applicants apply in different ways (some only apply to the most competitive courses). A low rate means a course is competitive, not that it is weak, and it does not show that any group of applicants finds it easier or harder.
What is the difference between nationality, domicile and fee status?
Nationality is your passport. Domicile is the country or region you normally live in when you apply, so a Chinese student doing A-levels in the UK may count as UK-domiciled. Fee status decides whether you pay Home or Overseas fees, which is also not the same as nationality. Universities publish different ones, so every comparison group on these pages is labelled, and groups defined in different ways should not be compared directly. The source files list the Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong SAR as two separate categories, "China" and "Hong Kong" (by passport or domicile); these pages label them mainland China and Hong Kong SAR.
Why are some numbers shown as <5?
To protect individuals, most universities suppress counts of 5 and under (or under 5). Suppressed cells are left out of totals and no rate is computed from them; where a total excludes suppressed cells, the page says how many (each hides at most 5).