UK universities offer a wide, wide range of subjects. Yet, the vast majority of students stick to the same handful of subjects. How dull. If your uni subject appears on this list of the 30 most popular UK unis courses, then you’re officially boring. You heard it here first.
The most popular UK uni courses in 2025 are pretty surprising. Barely any are the bog-standard, traditional academic subjects you start at school. The most conventional subject near the top of this list is history. But this is way less popular than design, or sport science. Almost twice as many students are now signing up for cinematics and photography than chemistry.
Law is the most studied uni subject in the UK. A whopping 29,830 freshers picked it. Maybe they all thought a law degree would lead to them being minted? Although, the average grad salaries for law students are actually the second worst out of all the uni subjects. Business studies wasn’t far behind law. Presumably, these students thought that studying businesses would help them get a job at a business. That might not be the best plan, as a whopping 7.3 per cent of business and management grads end up unemployed 15 months on. Those job prospects are even worse than those of performing arts students.
This data all comes from UCAS, and refers to the number of undergrads who accepted offers to study each subject through UCAS in the 2024 admissions cycle. Although the vast majority of undergrads apply to unis through UCAS, approximately a third of students in Scotland don’t. They’re not represented in these figures.
So, here we have the 30 most popular UK uni courses, based on the number of freshers who chose them:
30. Architecture – 6,035 students
29. Drama – 6,055 students
28. Computer games and animation – 6,090 students
27. Health sciences (non-specific) – 6,145 students
26. Education – 6,160 students
25. Tourism, transport and travel – 6,685 students
Could tourism students revise for their exams by going on holiday?
24. Building – 6,790 students
23. Marketing – 8,010 students
22. Media studies – 8,260 students
21. Mechanical engineering – 8,435 students
20. Teacher training – 8,840 students
19. Music – 9,010 students
18. Mathematics – 9,090 students
17. Cinematics and photography – 9,505 students
16. History – 9,605 students
Thankfully, the people still love a caslte
15. Finance – 9,810 students
14. Biomedical services – 9,990 students
13. Management studies – 11,295 students
12. Accounting – 11,470 students
11. Politics – 11,495 students
10. Sociology – 14,180 students
9. Economics – 14,485 students
8. Adult nursing – 14,795 students
Apparently all the cool kids are studying sport science now
7. Sport and exercise sciences – 16,040 students
6. Design studies – 18,545 students
5. Computer science – 21,080 students
4. Business and management (non-specific) – 21,885 students
3. Psychology (non-specific) – 22,015 students
2. Business studies – 22,505 students
1. Law – 29,830 students
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