5 best UK universities? (Excluding Oxbridge)

I don't know how anyone can completely trash top institutions like St Andrews and Durham. I'm going to the latter in August so I'll decide whether to apply there or not based on the course, which it has a great reputation for (and for the record, I quite like cathedrals )

Anyway, being a Londoner I've had the pleasure of experiencing KCL, UCL and LSE in some depth and I'd definitely put the latter two in the top five, especially having done work experience at a top city firm which claimed that UCL and LSE are the new Oxbridge.

I'd put Warwick in there too because I know employers do scout there quite extensively. I'm keeping my eye on 'up-and-comers' like Sheffield, Exeter and Nottingham because they're picking up prestige quite rapidly.

Lol at Notts "picking up prestige"....

It was pretty much top ten for 15 years before it expanded massively. Sheffield and Notts have completely different backgrounds - one slipped because of a strategic focus on expansion the other is just a solid top 20 uni.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Oxbridge

ICL/LSE/UCL

Warwick/Bristol/Durham/St. Andrews

Edinburgh/Nottingham/Bath/KCL/Manchester

It depends on the subject when you compare universities outside of Oxbridge. Nottingham is better than Durham for Economics. Bristol is better than UCL for Mechanical Engineering. Manchester is better than Durham for Physics.

Not that any of this even matters. They're all excellent universities, as are some I haven't listed.

i dont understand what notts did when they were consistently high, do you mind explaining a bit about their history please?

i think thats the first perfect list ive seen, ucl should be on the level below but apart from that

They just had really high entry requirements and a lot of the applicants there were Oxbridge rejects - hence high UCAS entry tariff. I believe they won awards for teaching standards as well.

It's expanded a lot now so keeping the same level of applicant is much more difficult - a lot of the courses are ABB-AAA. In the subjects it really dominates in, the standard of applicant is no different to Warwick/Durham/Bristol etc.

Posted from TSR Mobile

... guessing you're a Nottingham student? because the amount of delusion would only make sense if you are from there.

Mate, in: Law, Econ, Med, Vet Med, maybe Physics it's true. I feel sorry for your substandard reading comprehension skills, so bloody sorry.

East London
London Met
Bolton
Anglia Ruskin
LSE

Well Med and Vet Med the schools are similar across the board anyways and besides Warwick is GEM and Durham is only 2 years of pre-med.

Durham Law is pretty well known for being a lot better than Nottingham Law and Warwick and Durham Econ are better than Nottingham Econ by far.

Not too familiar with physics but I'd wager Durham is still better.

Durham Law is pretty much on par with Nottingham Law, there isn't a massive gulf that you are trying to make out here. Notts has a solid top 10 law school, in most situations it is better than Warwick's law school.

Seriously though, what is the point in this debate? Notts has some very strong (top 10-12) programs that attract a similar level of applicant as Warwick/Durham/Bristol.

These programs are basically a semblance of how things were before they grew massively. I get that the not so strong programs have diluted the average quality of applicant but in terms of rep it's still remains well-regarded in the aforementioned programs.

Can you not just accept that Notts was on par with Warwick/Durham/Bristol before? Is it hard to fathom that it still competes for applicants in its flagship programs?

At the end of the day, these slight differences in reputation mean nothing. Any employer/academic will understand the strong candidates from either university is bound to do well. If you want a real boost, Oxbridge, Imperial and LSE are the places to go.

You seem to absolutely love these prestige debates Okorange, why do you care so much?

I just looked at Complete Uni Guide 08 and you do have a point, the tariffs were much closer then than they are now.

Still, I do think today most people would consider Nottingham a tier below Durham/Warwick/Bristol etc

You never answered my last question!

i dont understand what notts did when they were consistently high, do you mind explaining a bit about their history please?

The posts on this thread do not reflect the specific problems Nottingham faced. Nottingham's applications peaked in 2003 and then fell dramatically before undertaking a long slow recovery. This had a significant effect on the quality of Nottingham's intake.

The story is given in my past posts

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2552655&p=45785510#post45785510


http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2552655&p=45788543#post45788543