This redistribution process involves importing and exporting candidates between colleges. Any given college will ‘export’ a certain number of the candidates who named it as their preference to other colleges, and will ‘import’ candidates for consideration who named another college as their preference.
This capacity by colleges to share and consider a wide range of candidates helps ensure the best applicants across the University get places, regardless of whether the particular college they named as their preference was oversubscribed in that year.
The table below shows, for each college, the number of applicants naming that college as their preference; the number who go on to be accepted by that college; and the number who go on to be accepted by any Oxford college (either the ‘preferred’ college or, through the redistribution process, another college).
The table also gives a sense for each college of what proportion of its intake is ‘imported’ from other colleges.
From left to right, the columns show:
- Total number of applicants naming this college as their preference;
- The number of those applicants accepted to this college;
- The percentage of applicants naming this college as their preference who were accepted to this college (success rate for getting a place at this ‘preferred’ college);
- The number of applicants naming this college as their preference who were accepted to Oxford (either this college or another);
- The percentage of applicants naming this college as their preference who were accepted to Oxford (success rate for getting a place at Oxford).
And:
- The number of candidates accepted by this college in total
- The number of candidates accepted by this college who had originally named another college as their preference (‘imports’);
- The number of ‘imports’ expressed as a percentage of the college’s overall acceptances (ie what proportion of the college’s intake is ‘imported’).
These figures only show those applicants who named a college of preference (which is not essential – see ‘open applications’ below).
| | Three-year average, 2012 to 2012 |
| College |
No. of applicants to this college |
No. of those applicants accepted at this college |
% of applicants naming this college accepted at this college |
No. of applicants to this college accepted at Oxford |
% of applicants naming this college accepted at Oxford |
Total intake at this college |
No. of imports |
% of total intake imported |
| Balliol College | 2345 | 299 | 13% |
465 | 20% | 327 | 28 | 9% |
| Brasenose College | 2665 | 291 | 11% |
508 | 19% | 308 | 17 | 6% |
| Christ Church | 1813 | 258 | 14% |
315 | 17% | 352 | 94 | 27% |
| Corpus Christi College | 768 | 158 | 21% |
204 | 27% | 195 | 37 | 19% |
| Exeter College | 1643 | 222 | 14% |
303 | 18% | 278 | 56 | 20% |
| Harris Manchester College | 363 | 49 | 13% |
51 | 14% | 90 | 41 | 46% |
| Hertford College | 1695 | 279 | 16% |
366 | 22% | 344 | 65 | 19% |
| Jesus College | 1421 | 229 | 16% |
278 | 20% | 285 | 56 | 20% |
| Keble College | 1871 | 299 | 16% |
371 | 20% | 373 | 74 | 20% |
| Lady Margaret Hall | 1290 | 228 | 18% |
273 | 21% | 332 | 104 | 31% |
| Lincoln College | 1291 | 216 | 17% |
282 | 22% | 243 | 27 | 11% |
| Magdalen College | 2270 | 315 | 14% |
547 | 24% | 334 | 19 | 6% |
| Mansfield College | 596 | 91 | 15% |
97 | 16% | 184 | 93 | 51% |
| Merton College | 1333 | 217 | 16% |
301 | 23% | 250 | 33 | 13% |
| New College | 1753 | 333 | 19% |
452 | 26% | 365 | 32 | 9% |
| Oriel College | 1229 | 188 | 15% |
266 | 22% | 239 | 51 | 21% |
| Pembroke College | 1152 | 185 | 16% |
220 | 19% | 272 | 87 | 32% |
| Somerville College | 579 | 131 | 23% |
141 | 24% | 264 | 133 | 50% |
| St Anne's College | 1183 | 213 | 18% |
240 | 20% | 335 | 122 | 36% |
| St Catherine's College | 1581 | 250 | 16% |
289 | 18% | 378 | 128 | 34% |
| St Edmund Hall | 931 | 182 | 20% |
204 | 22% | 288 | 106 | 37% |
| St Hilda's College | 476 | 79 | 17% |
90 | 19% | 267 | 188 | 70% |
| St Hugh's College | 725 | 152 | 21% |
172 | 24% | 296 | 144 | 49% |
| St John's College | 1871 | 276 | 15% |
387 | 21% | 322 | 46 | 14% |
| St Peter's College | 800 | 123 | 15% |
145 | 18% | 258 | 135 | 52% |
| The Queen's College | 1022 | 171 | 17% |
220 | 22% | 260 | 89 | 34% |
| Trinity College | 1454 | 218 | 15% |
293 | 20% | 248 | 30 | 12% |
| University College | 1696 | 261 | 15% |
324 | 19% | 318 | 57 | 18% |
| Wadham College | 1905 | 302 | 16% |
409 | 21% | 357 | 55 | 15% |
| Worcester College | 2758 | 315 | 11% |
604 | 22% | 340 | 25 | 7% |
| Permanent Private Halls | 95 | 19 | 20% |
22 | 23% | 137 | 118 | 86% |
The same information broken down by course choice is available in this interactive table.
Interpreting this information
Extreme caution is advised in attempting to draw conclusions about any given individual’s chances of success based on this information.
Variations by college in success rates (either in gaining a place at that college, or in gaining a place at Oxford) will be affected by:
- The number of overall applicants to the college in any given year;
- The course mix of applicants to the college in any given year (some courses are heavily oversubscribed, so colleges receiving lots of applications for those courses will show a lower success rate overall);
- The strength of the individual candidates applying to the college (if in any given year a college has a large number of very strong candidates, the success rate for getting into that college is likely to be low but the success rate for being ‘exported’ and getting into another college is likely to be high);
- The number of strong candidates being imported from other colleges (if in any given year other colleges have large numbers of very strong candidates, the college may do more ‘importing’).