Dentists are cleverer than doctors and all kinds of people are cleverer than lawyers, says a survey examining the degree options chosen by the highest-flying A-level students.

But the news is not good for social workers - because out of 170 subject areas at university, those studying for social work had the lowest A-level grades.

Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University tracked two million applications over five years to a wide range of universities.

The highest-scoring A-level candidates chose courses in pre-clinical dentistry, followed in second place by classics and in third place, pre-clinical medicine.

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Other high-flying subjects included Latin, veterinary science, maths, genetics and pharmacy.

Law courses came in 45th place, well below subjects such as history in 24th place and English in 28th place.

Subjects such as law, English and history would also have a much larger and wider sample of applicants than subjects such as Latin and classics.

In the middle regions of the table, accountancy and business studies were ranked at 81st and 85th places respectively.

Relegation zone

And heading towards the relegation zone, sociology was in 120th place, in terms of attracting students with the best grades.

Tourism, one of the vocational subjects which has grown rapidly in many universities, is at 159th place.

At the foot of the table, social work was in last place, with librarianship one place off the bottom.

Professor Derek Leslie said that this research was more than just a "beauty contest".

In could provide information about the perceived attractiveness of courses important to the economy.

"One of the lessons to emerge is the strong diversity. Good students appear to spread themselves across a wide range of subjects, with no obvious bias towards the arts or sciences."

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