The Oxbridge elitism row sparked by the British chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, may have caused a drop in state-school applications to Cambridge for the first time in 12 years, the university disclosed last week.

There was "great fear" that new figures would show the controversy has put comprehensive students off applying, said admissions director Susan Stobbs. Her comments came after Cambridge published its first-ever table detailing how many places went to state-school applicants in 1999. It showed they gained at least 50 per cent of the places at half the 24 main undergraduate colleges in 1999.

The figures uncovered a sizeable variation between colleges, with King's taking 79 per cent of its class of 1999 from state schools, compared with 39 per cent in the cases of Gonville and Caius and Corpus Christi.

In a large majority of colleges, state-school pupils constituted a higher proportion of the applicants than they did of those admitted. In only two colleges, Magdalene and St Catherine's, did the admissions proportionately favour the state-school applicants. Oxford published a breakdown of offers to state and independent school pupils earlier in the year.

This is the first time that Cambridge has published data for individual colleges and Stobbs said she feared it might make it more difficult for some to attract more state-school applicants.

If they looked at the figures in isolation, they might be put off applying to the very colleges that were working hardest to attract them, she warned.

The decision to publish was taken after the data was requested by an all-party group of MPs investigating the admissions issue, Stobbs said. The row about elitism erupted in May when Brown called Magdalen College, Oxford's rejection of state school pupil Laura Spence "scandalous".

Stobbs said: "Our great fear this year is that because of it all becoming a political issue it will make it harder to achieve what we want because people don't like being used as a political football.

"The average intake from state schools has been going up slowly but steadily over the last 12 years. Oxford have announced their number of applications are down and we sense it is the same with us. That would be the first time for 12 years that it was down."