More women than men apply for university
Women continued to outstrip men in applying for university according to this year's UCAS figures. In this application cycle 54.95% of people applying were female, a total of 267,577 applicants. 219,338 were male.
The figures also show that the gender imbalance is growing slightly. Last year 9.30% more women applied than man, but this year the difference was 9.91%. This was caused by the relative increases: 8.80% more women applied than last year, compared to 7.40% more men.
"[It is] clear that there has been no change in the current trend of more women applying than men. We need to understand more about why this should be so and what might be done to increase male participation rates," said Anthony McClaran, chief executive of UCAS.
That there should be an imbalance in the number of applications between the genders is perhaps not surprising: in recent years girls have tended to perform better than boys in school, and are therefore more likely to get the grades required to go to university.
The trend also continues at university, with the latest figures from HESA showing that 60.35% of female students got a first or a 2:1, compared to 52.81% of males.
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