UCAS January deadline applicants and applications, 2025
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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More UK domiciled 18 year olds have applied to a university place by the UCAS January equal consideration deadline (29 January 2025) this cycle than ever before.
There’s also been an increase in the total number of applicants at this point in the cycle – 2025 has seen 600,660 people apply via UCAS by the January deadline, the only time outside of the pandemic years that the 600,000 milestone has been passed.
International student applicants are up by 2.7 per cent at 118,790 – the highest number on record.
So on the face of it, you would chalk up this cycle as a success –with the potential to be a very good year of undergraduate recruitment for a sector that is facing cultural and financial challenges.
But under the headlines there are some areas for concern. Even though mature student applications are more likely to happen after the equal consideration deadline, what we can see so far suggests that the sharply downward trend that began in 2022 shows no sign of slowing.
Internationally, a continued strong showing in China and the US masks issues in India and Pakistan. Nigeria has recovered slightly, but is still a long way off the 2022 peak.
We do appear to have a problem with participation. Although UK 18 year old applicant numbers are up, the application rate (the number of applications divided by the total number of 18 year olds) is down overall. For England this is strongly linked to deprivation – the application rate has risen only in IMD quintile 5 (the most advantaged areas), falling for every other quintile.
Interestingly, in Scotland, rates are rising across the board – with the participation rate for SIMD quintile one now at 21.2 per cent, the highest on record.
Though it is far too early to draw a direct link, the patterns in England may link to a prominent continuation of the trend towards high tariff providers – there’s been a substantial increase in the number of applications to selective universities, with a parallel decrease in applications to the low tariff providers that have traditionally served hard to reach groups.
This group includes many providers that struggled to recruit to historic levels in 2024 – another year of lower-than-expected student numbers here will be very unwelcome.
“International student applicants are up by 2.7 per cent at 118,790 – the highest number on record”
Can anyone explain this one to me? How does it fit with stories of declining numbers leading to financial problems? Is it that they are spread more thinly over more providers, or that this number – despite being high – is lower than in university plans?
Many universities accept UG applications outside the UCAS system and as such the data only tells part of the story. Also, for many institutions the majority of their international recruitment is at PGT level and the declines there have been signifcant. Getting robust data on that is more challenging as applications are outside a single sector system like UCAS.
Neither. The figures here relate to undergraduate applications; the bulk of international applications are post-graduate and outside UCAS