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The biggest change in university admissions for more than a decade has passed almost unnoticed this year. Where previous applicants have had six choices of course, now there are only five.

The fact that there has been so little fuss suggests that many sixth-formers struggled to come up with a sixth choice. Finding five universities where they really wanted a place was difficult enough – the sixth was simply filling space in many cases.

In the most popular subjects, however, the full six applications could make all the difference. After all, the days when choices were listed in order of preference are long gone. Nowadays, admissions staff do not even know which other universities are on an applicant’s form, let alone which is the preferred option. You are as likely to get an offer from your last choice as your first.

Narrowing the number of options should mean taking a little more care to make realistic selections. In fact, however, it may have had the opposite effect, accelerating the trend away from including an ‘insurance’ choice in case A levels do not go according to plan. For a number of years, students have tended to go for the riskier strategy of making all their applications to universities that are likely to make similar offers. With only five slots to fill, the temptation will be for more students to do the same.

The likely outcome is that more places will be filled in Clearing or through the Ucas Extra system, which went live at the end of February. This lists courses that still have vacancies after the first round of offers have been made and is open to anyone who has been rejected by all their chosen universities, or declined the offers that were made to them.

For those applying for places in 2009, however, there are lessons to be learnt from the first set of applications made under the new system. Comparing last year’s figures with those published in February is not easy because one set is based on six applications per person and the other five. But some universities have seen a sharp decline in applications, while others have dropped only marginally, if at all.

It is fair to assume that those experiencing a big fall were many applicants’ sixth choice and, while they may have large numbers of well-qualified and committed applicants, plenty more are likely to have them low down their list of preferences. Conversely, where last year’s total has held up well, it is an indication of genuinely high demand for places. Oxford and Cambridge, for example, have not been affected at all by the switch to five choices because virtually everyone who applies has them at the top of their (private) list – numbers were actually up when the Oxbridge deadline passed in October.

Others experiencing increases included Surrey, City University and Nottingham Trent, as well as several of the most recently-established universities. Those where the decline was more than twice the national average included Durham, Essex, Hull, Keele, Liverpool, Sussex and Queen’s University Belfast. Welsh universities, including Cardiff, were consistently down.

Year-on-year differences can be misleading – some may be improving from a low base, while others are falling back after a run of healthy increases. But there are some surprising names at the extremes of this year’s swings, which are worth taking into account when judging where a strong application will have the best chance of success.

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