Oxbridge Interview Invitation Rates by Subject

1. Home
2. ›
3. Blog
4. ›
5. Oxbridge Interview Invitation Rates by Subject

Oxford publishes a shortlisting rate for almost every undergraduate course, and it varies enormously: from 18.1% for Economics and Management up to 81.1% for History, based on each department's own published admissions figures for recent cycles. Cambridge, by contrast, publishes no shortlisting or interview-stage figure at all in its official statistics - its admissions report tracks applicants straight from Applications to Offers, with no interview column in between. That means a subject-by-subject table showing "Oxford interview rate" next to "Cambridge interview rate" is very often comparing two different things wearing the same label. Below are the real, sourced Oxford figures by subject, what Cambridge publishes instead, and why the two are not interchangeable.

A shortlisting rate only tells you how many candidates reached the room; it says nothing about what they were asked once they got there. Our expert interview packs set out real worked answers for 17 subjects, so you can see how a strong response is actually built rather than guessing from a bare question list.

Oxford's Shortlisting Rate by Subject, From Each Department's Own Report

Oxford's central "Annual Admissions Statistical Report" does not tabulate shortlisting by course - its by-course tables cover demographic breakdowns only, and the full shortlisting data lives in a separate interactive dashboard. But individual Oxford departments and faculties each publish their own admissions statistics report, in plain text, with exact Applications, Shortlisted and Offers figures for their course. The table below pulls from those department reports directly - not from a secondary aggregator - which is also why the cycles differ from row to row: each department publishes on its own schedule.

Shortlisting Rate = Shortlisted ÷ Applications, computed from the counts shown, except *Medicine, where the Medical Sciences Division states the percentage directly rather than publishing a shortlisted headcount. History's row totals include all six of its single and joint courses; across the whole faculty, 1,106 of 1,706 applicants were shortlisted in 2024-25 (64.8%).

Two things stand out. First, the range is enormous - a candidate applying for History is more than four times as likely to be shortlisted as one applying for Economics and Management, purely as a function of subject choice. Second, both Economics and Management (18.1%) and Computer Science (19.6%), the two lowest rates found in any department report, are named directly by Oxford's central admissions report as being among its most oversubscribed courses - which is not a coincidence, and which the next section explains in more detail.

Why You Can't Compare These Numbers Straight Across to Cambridge

Oxford's admissions process has an explicit shortlisting stage. Its 2026 Annual Admissions Statistical Report states plainly: "Typically, Oxford aims to interview three candidates for every place. Shortlisting for interview is done to a centrally agreed set of criteria for each course." The same report explains what happens next: "Applications to Oxford are all considered together, and then shortlisted applicants are invited to interview. Around a third of those who are interviewed are then made an offer of a place." So Oxford's process has four distinct, separately measured stages: Applications, Shortlisted, Offers, Acceptances - and the "Shortlisting Rate" in the table above measures the first cut, before anyone reaches an interview room.

Oxford's own interviews guidance page states the university-wide totals behind that shortlisting stage in plain numbers: "Oxford typically receives over 23,000 applications for around 3,300 places every year and shortlists approximately 10,000 candidates." The same page adds a detail that is easy to miss: "Oxford typically offers around 20,000 online interviews to approximately 10,000 shortlisted candidates" - interviews outnumber shortlisted candidates roughly two to one because some candidates, for example those applying to a joint course or being considered by more than one college, sit more than one interview. Oxford states all four figures as typical, round numbers for a normal year rather than an exact count for one cycle, so this guide does not compute a single Oxford-wide interview rate from them - the department-level shortlisting rates in the table above remain the more precise, subject-specific figures to use.

Cambridge's process is structured differently, and its own published statistics show it. Cambridge's 2025-cycle Undergraduate Admissions Statistics report tracks candidates through a table headed: "Applications, Winter Pooled, Offers, Summer Pooled, AR Pooled, Acceptances" - direct and open applications, then Winter Pool reallocation between colleges, then Offers (direct or via the Winter Pool), then a Summer Pool for near-miss offer-holders, then the August Reconsideration Pool, then Acceptances. There is no "Shortlisted" or "Interviewed" column anywhere in that table, or anywhere else in the report. Cambridge does not publish a shortlisting rate by subject because Cambridge does not track shortlisting as a separate, reportable stage the way Oxford does - the great majority of applicants who are not withdrawn or rejected outright do reach an interview, so the meaningful filter for Cambridge shows up later, at the Offers stage.

This is why any table you see online listing "Oxford interview rate" and "Cambridge interview rate" side by side, using the same column header, is quietly comparing two different measurements. Oxford's figure is a true pre-interview shortlisting rate. A Cambridge figure with the same label is, at best, a success rate (offers or acceptances divided by applications) standing in for a stage Cambridge does not separately publish.

Cambridge by Subject: The Closest Official Equivalent

Since Cambridge does not publish a shortlisting figure, the closest genuinely official, subject-level number is its published success rate: acceptances divided by applications, from the University's own Undergraduate Admissions Statistics report for the 2025 cycle. It measures the whole process end to end, not just the pre-interview stage, so read it as a different metric rather than a worse version of Oxford's.

Success Rate = Acceptances ÷ Applications, as published in Cambridge's Table 1.1. Acceptances (not shown here for each row) total 3,669 across all subjects.

Computer Science has Cambridge's lowest published success rate at 7.4% - by coincidence the same subject that also has one of Oxford's lowest shortlisting rates, though the two numbers still measure different stages of two different processes. Cambridge's own report also notes that the University "typically" receives about six applications per place across all subjects, which is a comparable ratio to the "three candidates interviewed per place" figure Oxford states for its shortlisting stage - the two universities are simply reporting the ratio at different points in the process.

The Only Live Cambridge Interview Figure - and Why It Isn't University-Wide

Cambridge's central admissions statistics carry no interview or shortlisting figure at all, for any subject. The University's own 2025-cycle Undergraduate Admissions Statistics report runs to 50 pages, and extracting and searching the complete text turns up zero occurrences of the word "interview" anywhere in the document - not in a table, a footnote or a heading. Cambridge's general interviews guidance for applicants is similarly silent on a proportion: it states only that "we invite many applicants to interview. Not everyone interviewed will be offered a place, but everyone who is made an offer will have been interviewed" - a description of the process, not a number.

One part of Cambridge does publish a number, though: the Faculty of Mathematics, on its own admissions pages - and it publishes two slightly different versions of it. The Faculty's FAQ states: "In the past few years, over 80% of applicants have been invited to interview every year." Its separate How to Apply page states: "Historically, between 75% and 80% of applicants have been invited to interview, and we expect to continue interviewing the substantial majority of applicants." Both are live pages, both are the Faculty's own words, and neither reconciles the difference with the other - "over 80%" and "75-80%" sit on two different pages of the same admissions section.

This is very likely the source of the "Cambridge interviews around 75%" figure that circulates well beyond Mathematics applicants. One current competitor guide states as fact that "Cambridge's website states that roughly 75% of applicants are invited to interview," with no page named and no link given - and no such university-wide figure exists anywhere on Cambridge's site to point to. The number itself is not invented: it is a real figure, on a real Cambridge page, correctly quoted. The error is scope, not accuracy - a Mathematics Faculty figure, stated for Mathematics applicants, has been read and repeated as though it applied to every Cambridge course.

Why Some Subjects Filter So Much Harder Than Others

Oxford's own 2026 Annual Admissions Statistical Report gives a direct explanation for why certain subjects have such low shortlisting rates: oversubscription is concentrated in a small group of courses, and it falls more heavily on state-educated applicants. The report states that "40.9% of state applications between 2023 and 2025 were for five of the most oversubscribed subjects at Oxford (Law; Medicine; Mathematics; Physics; and Philosophy, Politics & Economics), compared with 30.5% of independent applications." Two of the lowest shortlisting rates found in this guide's department-level data - Economics and Management (18.1%) and Computer Science (19.6%) - sit alongside those named subjects as some of Oxford's most competitive courses by applications per place, which is the mechanical reason their shortlisting rates come out so low: far more strong applicants than there is time to interview.

By contrast, History and its joint courses shortlist a large majority of applicants - 1,106 of 1,706 across the whole faculty in 2024-25 - not because History is an easier subject to win a place in, but because more of the filtering there happens after shortlisting, at written work and interview, rather than before it. A high shortlisting rate is not the same as a high offer rate: Oxford's own report puts the University-wide offer rate for interviewed candidates at around a third, fairly consistently across subjects, so a course with a low shortlisting rate is mainly harder to reach interview for in the first place, not harder to convert once you are there.

How to Check This Admissions Cycle's Numbers Yourself

Every figure above is a specific cycle's data, published by that department at a point in time - not a live, constantly updating number. If you want the current cycle's shortlisting rate for a specific subject, go directly to the source rather than relying on a secondary summary, including this one:

• Oxford's central Undergraduate Admissions Statistics page links to an interactive "Shortlisting by Course" dashboard covering every course, split by domicile, for the three-year total 2023-2025 - and flags any course built from fewer than 30 applications as too small to draw firm conclusions from.
• Individual departments publish their own reports directly on their course pages - see, for example, the Faculty of History's admissions facts and figures, the Department of Chemistry's applicant report, or the Medical Sciences Division's Medicine shortlisting statistics.
• Cambridge publishes its Undergraduate Admissions Statistics report each May, covering the previous cycle by subject, college and school type.

If you are still waiting to hear whether you have an interview at all, our guide to confirmed vs projected Oxbridge interview dates covers when invitations typically go out for both universities. Once you have one, our what happens after an Oxbridge interview guide and our 100 worked interview questions by subject are the natural next steps, and if your subject is Chemistry specifically, see our dedicated Oxford Chemistry grade requirements guide.

Frequently Asked Questions