Lowest Drop Out Rates for Cambridge

The first complete survey of student completion and background published by HEFCE shows that Cambridge University has the lowest drop-out rate of all Universities at 1%. The benchmark set by the Government for drop-out projections was 6%, and Cambridge's closest statistically valid comparison, Oxford University, also achieved a low drop-out of 2%.

Susan Stobbs, Director of Admissions, said: "I think these figures show that Cambridge puts a huge amount of care into assessing candidates rigorously at admission. It is also a tremendous tribute to the college system, that provides the world class personal teaching and the close community support that students thrive on. We have also been fund raising to increase our hardship funds to ensure that no students is forced to leave for lack of financial support."

In terms of state school background for undergraduates, Cambridge achieved a figure of 52%, falling 11% below the projected benchmark of 63%. However, many other leading research universities surveyed showed a much wider gap between the proportion of state school applicants they had and the proportion the government expected them to have based on their entrance requirements.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Alec Broers said:

"We are keen to continue our efforts to increase applications from state schools, and in the past two years since these HEFCE figures were collated, and our own access initiatives have doubled, I am pleased to say that our state school entrance has increased by 3 percentage points, which represents an overall growth of 6%. However, I think that the interesting thing these figures also show is that there are many other institutions that have a very similar social mix to Cambridge, and in fact a wider gap between the government's expected social intake and the actual one. Cambridge should not been seen to be alone in a problem that faces all leading research universities."