The Most Popular Undergraduate Courses of 2018/19

  • The most popular course of 2018/19 is ‘Subjects allied to medicine’ while the least popular was ‘Non-European Langs, Lit and related’ 
  • When it comes to women, the most popular subjects were those allied to medicine 
  • The most popular undergraduate course for male students in 2018/19 is Business and Admin studies

Figures from UCAS reveal that more than 353,960 people from across the UK were accepted to start an undergraduate course in 2018. However, life at university isn’t all rosy, as The Department of Education recently announced that students can expect to pay £11,000 for shorter and more intense courses.

Once again, the debate surrounding the “best value” degrees continues to resurface, as students consider their options before leaving university with large amounts of debt.

Consequently, over the years, since official tuition fees increased, some university courses have proven more or even less popular, with stark differences between what men and women choose.

So, what were the most popular undergraduate courses in 2018?  

Training and educational providers Theknowledgeacademy decided to answer this question and investigated UCAS January analysis results which represents the number of applications submitted per subject of study, as well as the number of male and female students accepted onto each course for the September intake.

The results show that, when it comes to women, ‘Subjects allied to Medicine’ is the most popular undergraduate course with 208,460 female students accepted in 2018. This is followed by ‘Biological Sciences’ with 138,440 approved applications, whilst ‘Creative Arts & Design’ came third with 124,270.

At the other end of the scale, the least endorsed subjects for women to study at university included:

Technologies, Non-European Langs, Lit and related, European Langs, Lit & related, Architecture, Build and Plan and Computer Sciences. 

The Knowledge Academy then assessed trends among male students. The most popular subjects for applications in 2018/19 were:

Business & Admin studies, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Computer Sciences and Social studies.  

However, similarly to women, the subjects least applied to by men were:

Non-European Langs, Lit & related, Technologies, European Langs, Lit & related, Veterinary Science, Agriculture & related and Linguistic, Classics & related.

Charlotte Giver

Charlotte is the founder and editor-in-chief at Your Coffee Break magazine. She studied English Literature at Fairfield University in Connecticut whilst taking evening classes in journalism at MediaBistro in NYC. She then pursued a BA degree in Public Relations at Bournemouth University in the UK. With a background working in the PR industry in Los Angeles, Barcelona and London, Charlotte then moved on to launching Your Coffee Break from the YCB HQ in London’s Covent Garden and has been running the online magazine for the past 10 years. She is a mother, an avid reader, runner and puts a bit too much effort into perfecting her morning brew.