High school graduates are swinging towards creative courses rather than practical industry degrees, according to first round university offer data released on Wednesday.

Most Victorian graduates have this year been offered university places before Christmas and there has been a dramatic rise in applications for fine arts and theatre studies.

The University of Melbourne's courses in musical theatre and acting surged to become the eighth and 10th most popular courses this year, up from 18th and 22nd last year.

Their popularity usurped the number of students wanting to become physiotherapists, dentists and paramedics.

However, there was a boom in applications for medicine at Monash University. Victoria's only undergraduate medicine degree offers only about 100 places but had more than 2277 applications, overtaking last year's No.1, arts at Melbourne University.