The present invention discloses a method and terminal for selecting a random access resource, the method includes: the terminal receives the physical downlink control channel signaling sent by a system; the terminal determines the first subframe which meets a condition A and contains a random access resource from the subsequent subframes of the subframe receiving the physical downlink control channel signaling, the condition A is that the time difference between the first subframe and the subframe receiving the physical downlink control channel signaling is greater than or equal to k, k is the time delay defined by the physical layer of the terminal; and the terminal starts a selection on the subframe containing a random access source from the first subframe.