APPLICATIONS TO universities and colleges for the next academic year have increased by 7.8 percent compared to last year, figures released by UCAS revealed.
24,537 more prospective students applied for university places, bringing the total number of applications up to 481,784. For the first time 10,482 nursing and midwifery applicants also applied through the University and Colleges Admissions Service.
Professor Rick Trainor, president of Universities UK, considered the increase good news.
"Even when taking into account the inclusion of nursing and midwifery applicants for the first time this year, there are still 25,000 more people applying than this time last year. And despite the recent changes to the fees regime in England, there are 30,000 more applicants to English institutions than last year."
At 57 percent, more women applied to university than men, and women also had a greater increase of university applications with 9.5 percent compared to 5.7 percent for men.
Law remained the most popular subject, followed by psychology and pre-clinical medicine.
Experts cautioned however that the rise in applications should not be overvalued.
The modern universities group, Million+, emphasised that there was an overall increase in 18-year-olds which was not taken into account in the UCAS data, while others criticised that the numbers only represented full-time students, ignoring part-time applications.
Also, Milton+ highlighted that the number of qualified applicants who did not pick up their offers and enrol at university was still at 100,000 every year, so an increase in applications would not automatically mean an increase in students come September.
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