Undergraduate Applications, Offers and Acceptances 2016

Field of Education

The most popular broad field of education (in terms of number of applicants) in 2016, excluding WA TAC applicants, was Health (84,289 or 25.7% of applicants). This was followed by Society and Culture (74,653 or 22.7% of applicants) and Management and Commerce (42,961 or 13.1% of applicants).
Health recorded the largest increase (6.2%) in the number of applicants in 2016, followed by Creative Arts (5.0%), Information Technology (4.5%) and Agriculture, Environmental and Related Studies (2.8%). Engineering Related Technologies (-4.8%), Education (-4.4%), Architecture and Building (-2.2%) and Management and Commerce (-0.7%) recorded negative growth.
Table : Applicants by field of education (excluding WA TAC applicants), 2015 and 2016

Field of education	2015	2016	% Change
Natural and Physical Sciences	27,732	28,485	2.7%
Information Technology	8,955	9,359	4.5%
Engineering and Related Technologies	18,694	17,792	-4.8%
Architecture and Building	8,325	8,142	-2.2%
Agriculture, Environmental and Related Studies	4,437	4,560	2.8%
Health	79,404	84,289	6.2%
Medical studies	7,437	7,881	6.0%
Dental Studies	1,969	2,004	1.8%
Veterinary Studies	1,328	1,827	37.6%
Nursing	30,289	33,843	11.7%
Health Other	38,381	38,734	0.9%
Education	28,884	27,621	-4.4%
Teacher Education	27,857	26,394	-5.3%
Education Other	1,027	1,227	19.5%
Management and Commerce	43,249	42,961	-0.7%
Society and Culture*	74,264	74,653	0.5%
Law	12,903	12,979	0.6%
Creative Arts	27,550	28,926	5.0%
Mixed field programs	1,160	1,193	2.8%
Total (excluding WA)	322,779	328,219	1.7%

Note: Hospitality is not shown due to the small number of applicants, hence the total number of applicants does not equal the sum of applicants by broad field of education in the above table.

*Applications made through WA tertiary admission centre are excluded due to the ‘half-year’ Year 12 cohort effect, but applications made directly by WA residents are included. Totals include missing /unknown postcodes which cannot be assigned to a state/territory. * Society and Culture includes a broad range of subject areas including Behavioural Science, Law, Language & Literature, Economics & Econometrics

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