The University Admissions Centre preference statistics give insight into which Australian universities school leavers are vying for a place at.

Just 519 students put down UNE as a first preference compared to 602 last year.

But, more than 90 per cent of applicants apply directly rather than through an admission centre, a UNE spokeswoman said.

“The majority of UNE’s offers to school leavers is through the UNE Early Entry process, which is managed by UNE and not UAC,” she said.

“With the move of institutions to direct application processes, UAC has declined in relative importance over a number of years.

“Even among school leavers UAC represents less than a quarter of UNE’s total applications.”

There’s is not a finite number of positions UNE will offer to students in 2019, but overwhelmingly school leavers prefer metropolitan universities.

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As a first choice UNE paled in comparison to Bathurst’s regional university Charles Sturt, that had more than 2200 students put it down as number one this year.

There’s a range of reasons why students aren’t picking UNE first, the spokeswoman said.

“Including the size of a university’s catchment area, students wishing to stay at home or close to home while studying, financial costs of university, the courses on offer and the university experience that individual students are seeking,” she said.

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