[Jackso]

(Original post by Meat is Murder)
Kings College ranking outside the top 20? Leicester is a real surprise for me. It was 17th last year too but that doesn't hide the fact five years ago it was nowhere.

To be honest, there's so little difference between Universities 10-25 and 25-40 in general I'm only ever surprised when a university falls out of that basic group. Such as the Guardian, which had several universities with good reputations struggling to make the top 55. And Leicester always seemed to have a pretty decent reputation, I thought? Top 30-ish.

[Jackso]

(Original post by fnm)
Leicester has been in the top 30s for years and years. I don't see how Exeter a uni which was ranked 46th in 2005 in one league table and was usually around the 50s in the 90s and is in the top 10. That's more of a surprise to me.

Yeah, Exeter always makes me raise an eyebrow. In 10 years it goes from a pretty respectable/good university to one of the very best in the UK, right up there with Durham/St Andrews/etc?

[0404343m]

(Original post by Jackso)
Yeah, Exeter always makes me raise an eyebrow. In 10 years it goes from a pretty respectable/good university to one of the very best in the UK, right up there with Durham/St Andrews/etc?

Which, if TSR had existed in 1998, would've been the equivalent of:

"Yeah, Durham/St Andrews always make me raise an eyebrow. In 10 years they go from a pretty respectable/good university to one of the very best in the UK, right up there with York/etc?"

York has been second before and for much of the 1993-2003 period was rarely out of the top half-dozen. Durham and St Andrews have both been out of the top 20. Doesn't take a long time in the history of universities to completely turn what some people think upside down. For most of the degree holders in the UK, league tables didn't exist when they applied. They still seem to do just fine without being told Leeds was 9th or 39th. All that have been mentioned are excellent universities, regardless of what a journalist thinks.

[Jackso]

(Original post by 0404343m)
Which, if TSR had existed in 1998, would've been the equivalent of:

"Yeah, Durham/St Andrews always make me raise an eyebrow. In 10 years they go from a pretty respectable/good university to one of the very best in the UK, right up there with York/etc?"

York has been second before and for much of the 1993-2003 period was rarely out of the top half-dozen. Durham and St Andrews have both been out of the top 20. Doesn't take a long time in the history of universities to completely turn what some people think upside down. For most of the degree holders in the UK, league tables didn't exist when they applied. They still seem to do just fine without being told Leeds was 9th or 39th. All that have been mentioned are excellent universities, regardless of what a journalist thinks.

Huh... Fair enough. I just assumed those ones had always been at that level. I know league tables mean **** all in general, though.

[ajp100688]

(Original post by mc1000)
Awesome - thanks

Main ranking I wanted to know was QMUL; really confuses me how it consistently falls outside the top 30. Seems like a top-notch uni in every respect, so its relatively low ranking doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Ah well, doesn't affect me, considering I'll only ever be a postgrad student there.

If you're a postgrad you should maybe look at it's RAE rankings, which give a better idea of the research going on there. In which case QMUL ranks 11th according to the Guardian or 13th according to the Times. It just ranks lower in generalised league tables because of it's low entry standards (relative to other RG institutions) which are partly a result of institutional ethos and also because some of it's graduate employment stats aren't great either. Since I went there I've noticed a concerted effort to rise entry standards every year and the current 5 year plan of the uni aims to make it top 10 by 2015 (not gonna happen but still), so expect to see it rise somewhat, it already holds rankings you'd expect of it in subject tables.

[A level Az]

Oxford ~ Cambridge

Imperial ~ LSE ~ Durham <--- You're looking at this tier I think.

UCL ~ Edinburgh ~ Bristol ~ Warwick ~ St Andrews

[lukas1051]

It really does depend on the subject. This question is pretty meaningless. You'll see the same names crop up in this thread and people will rank them differently, at the end of the day there is no official list because it depends on a lot of factors. Even Oxbridge could be placed below some institutions depending on what criteria you're looking for and in what subject.

[ninja_pidgeon]

(Original post by A level Az)
Oxford ~ Cambridge

Imperial ~ LSE ~ Durham <--- You're looking at this tier I think.

UCL ~ Edinburgh ~ Bristol ~ Warwick ~ St Andrews

Just saying Glasgow is a better uni than edinburgh for most subjects


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[swbp]

Could someone explain why Goldsmith's is always so low? I don't go there, but i'm always suprised that a university with such good reserach standards often fails to make the top 50 :/

[Deep456]

Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial, UCL, LSE, Nottingham, St Andrews, Warwick, York and Birmingham - That's the Sutton 13.

Looks pretty accurate in terms of the top few universities, obviously some of them are debatable with the likes of Manchester, KCL, etc.

[ninja_pidgeon]

(Original post by Deep456)
Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial, UCL, LSE, Nottingham, St Andrews, Warwick, York and Birmingham - That's the Sutton 13.

Looks pretty accurate in terms of the top few universities, obviously some of them are debatable with the likes of Manchester, KCL, etc.

I don't understand why people always put Edinburgh above Glasgow. I don't go to either but Glasgow is the better university between the two.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Tsunami2011]

(Original post by ninja_pidgeon)
I don't understand why people always put Edinburgh above Glasgow. I don't go to either but Glasgow is the better university between the two.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Edinburgh does better on global rankings, seems to have more artificial prestige.

[FDR]

(Original post by Deep456)
Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial, UCL, LSE, Nottingham, St Andrews, Warwick, York and Birmingham - That's the Sutton 13.

Looks pretty accurate in terms of the top few universities, obviously some of them are debatable with the likes of Manchester, KCL, etc.

What was the Sutton 13 is now the the Sutton 30, which includes the universities you listed, as well as Manchester and KCL. Other universities now' included are Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Lancaster and a range of others.

[ninja_pidgeon]

(Original post by Tsunami2011)
Edinburgh does better on global rankings, seems to have more artificial prestige.

Yeah I think it's that and the famous Alum. Look at St. Andrews for example, its a wayyyy better uni but isnt ranked that high in the "World Rankings". I can't talk for all subjects but from open days at both it seems like Glasgow outstrips Edinburgh for most sciences but I also think it's Edinburgh's Medical School that ranks it so high.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[0404343m]

(Original post by Deep456)
That's the Sutton 13 - their not my choices.

There will be some subjects in which Glasgow is better than Edinburgh and vice-versa. Glasgow is a fantastic university but overall I personally feel Edinburgh is better.

Edinburgh has a historic medical school, more famous alumni. The city and university look beautiful and does well internationally (not saying the same isn't true of Glasgow).

Glasgow has not ranked at the very top of university rankings recently. It tends to rank around 20. Edinburgh usually does better.

Just a few reasons. The top public schools quite like Edinburgh as well, maybe a potential reason?

Obviously, what subject you do at either is more important than overall university prestige which in itself is subjective.

I think all of those currently apply to both. Google some alumni: Adam Smith, Lord Kelvin in one, David Hume and Charles Darwin in the other. The list is as long as your arm at both.

Rankings wise: currently, they're about one place apart (14th and 15th). Infact, Glasgow is top 20 in all (rankings are stupid things at the best of times, but since we're using it as a reason) and ahead of Edinburgh in two, Edinburgh isn't top 20 in all at the moment. Historically- i.e. 20 years out of a 550 year old institution- they've tended to be about the same place- Glasgow has always had a higher dropout rate (possibly due to a higher percentage of local students who don't pay fees and have less tying them to the degree) which costs points. Otherwise, zilch to pick.

Internationally, Edinburgh does well. There's a good reason for this too: Look at global rankings and the places that place highly. There's an article on this somewhere if I can dig it up, but essentially, universities in capital cities place highly because academics are asked to rate 'best universities in Finland', or something. Since they probably know nothing about Finland, they write 'Helsinki' and hope for the best. This is partly why KCL and Edinburgh do very well in international tables (with peer review) and less well in national ones. Ask any German about their education system, and they'll tell you having Humboldt Berlin and Freie Berlin at the top of global tables is a nonsense: Internally they're nowhere, certainly not top three. This happens in many countries. I think if you ask Scots rather than undergraduates or school pupils on TSR, you'll get a different answer.

Where you're correct though is public schools in England. The further you go from Glasgow, the more people are likely to believe that the place is a grim, crime ridden hole, as if all of one city is a castle and the royal mile and all of the other is a council estate in Easterhouse. That outdated kind of reputation take s a long time to change, and there are still parents that won't allow their kids to go to Manchester, Glasgow, Dundee or Belfast, thinking of the time they were students in the 1970s. Edinburgh, despite having more than its fair share of dodgy areas, has avoided that. Glasgow has some horrendous crime rates- but nowhere near the university in the affluent and prosperous West End of the city.

If you go to the Old College of Edinburgh and walk around that area, and then compare it with the Gilbert Scott of Glasgow and the area around that, I'd honestly defy anyone to tell me that the former is better in any way. The problem is, and this is where 'prestige' comes into it, is that a reputation of a city probably means lots of privately educated kids will immediately write off Glasgow, not bother visiting, and then fawn over how amazingly brilliant Edinburgh is. I'm not saying it isn't, but having taught and researched at both and know numerous people at both, I'd say there's nothing to pick between them in terms of facilities, academics, standards. Give Glasgow City another 20 years to wipe the grim image of the 60s and 70s away, and I think we'd be having a very different conversation. After all, for hundreds of years they have existed to be the mirror of each other in the west and east of the country, primarily focused on serving the two regions where two thirds of Scotland live.

Fundamentally, I think there are bigger things to worry about rather than whether one huge, complex, institution is better overall than another huge, complex institution. TSR is permanently obsessed with 'Leeds vs Manchester' debates, as if having one on the CV is going to stop you getting the job compared to the graduate of the other. Even with Oxford and Cambridge, that hasn't been how it's worked for years now.

Edit: Also, ST13 was a table based on the highest ranked universities from the previous year's league table, i.e. 1999. That was full of problems (since some universities with relatively bad records on admitting students from poorer backgrounds like Exeter were omitted. The Sutton Trust themselves said once that had they used another year's tables, there'd be different institutions there), so they decided to go on the 30 'most selective' instead, and updated it in 2011. The way rankings go, it'd always have been dangerous to base things on one year from over a decade ago.

[0404343m]

(Original post by ninja_pidgeon)
Yeah I think it's that and the famous Alum. Look at St. Andrews for example, its a wayyyy better uni but isnt ranked that high in the "World Rankings". I can't talk for all subjects but from open days at both it seems like Glasgow outstrips Edinburgh for most sciences but I also think it's Edinburgh's Medical School that ranks it so high.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

St Andrews is a great little university- I'd still challenge the perception that it's better than Edinburgh or Glasgow though. That's been a product of media attention and circumstances in the last ten years which have, literally, quadrupled demand for places compared with the mid-1990s level. Academics from there freely admit they use the same courses, texts, and past papers from when they asked for CCC to get in (when Ed and Gla were BBB, by the way), so while I'd say yes, it's very good- I'd say part of the reason right now for its ranking success is how fashionable it is as a study destination. In terms of what they teach and what they expect from students, I really really don't think that's changed from the days in the 1990s when it too was ranked ~25th and was far less popular with English (and particularly American) applicants.

The internal academia joke about Edinburgh is that it's a medical school with a university attached. It's huuuggggee in that area, and since that research generates so much money and citations (lets face it, no one gets 1,000 citations or 10 million quid from a history grant), a big medical school can drive a university forward in so many respects despite it making up about 5% of the students/staff at the university. In this respect, Ed's medical school is significantly larger than anywhere north of Manchester.

[Slumpy]

(Original post by 0404343m)
Where you're correct though is public schools in England. The further you go from Glasgow, the more people are likely to believe that the place is a grim, crime ridden hole, as if all of one city is a castle and the royal mile and all of the other is a council estate in Easterhouse. That outdated kind of reputation take s a long time to change, and there are still parents that won't allow their kids to go to Manchester, Glasgow, Dundee or Belfast, thinking of the time they were students in the 1970s. Edinburgh, despite having more than its fair share of dodgy areas, has avoided that. Glasgow has some horrendous crime rates- but nowhere near the university in the affluent and prosperous West End of the city.

Glasgow remains the only place I've ever seen one guy think attacking four people (all bigger than him) was a sensible move
Also, can't rep you, but as always your posts are filled with sense (though I would say for the courses I know much about, St A is often a bit past Edinburgh and Glasgow)

[Norton1]

(Original post by Slumpy)
Glasgow remains the only place I've ever seen one guy think attacking four people (all bigger than him) was a sensible move
Also, can't rep you, but as always your posts are filled with sense (though I would say for the courses I know much about, St A is often a bit past Edinburgh and Glasgow)

In Glasgow that still technically renders him a 'wee poof'.

[0404343m]

(Original post by Slumpy)
Glasgow remains the only place I've ever seen one guy think attacking four people (all bigger than him) was a sensible move
Also, can't rep you, but as always your posts are filled with sense (though I would say for the courses I know much about, St A is often a bit past Edinburgh and Glasgow)

Yeah- there is a 'tough guy' Glaswegian culture among some, no doubt about it. Fact is, Glasgow's crime is driven by gangs and drugs in particularly bad pockets of the city (which are probably, on balance, more numerous and more dangerous than most other places). A perceived disrespecting in the wrong pub to the wrong guy (that's not just a Glasgow problem though) can end up with a bottle to the head, as seeming tough is paramount. That all being said, that's a different thing entirely to saying it's more dangerous to be a student, since they're pretty damn well unlikely to be in a gang owing people drug money in Possilpark, and they'll be spending more time in the West End or city centre where the worst thing that might happen is that someone spills his latté over your vintage tweed sports jacket, or the Sauvignon Blanc was corked in the last wine bar. Just like Edinburgh students aren't likely to hang about Sighthill for the fun of it, so too are Glasgow students unlikely to wander 30mins out of their way to find a boozer in Maryhill.

Courses wise: For my areas (broadly defined as History, Politics and Economics, although I know a bit about English Literature too), I'd say in terms of content and expectations, there is nothing to pick. Taking a load of students from a Glasgow or Edinburgh state school means as lecturers we have to get people into good habits that they might not have been taught at school, so it can be a bit more of a chore to get them up to speed initially, but once that hurdle is achieved, I've not noticed anything much. St Andrews has still managed to cap honours class sizes at 8 with lectures of 24, whereas at Glasgow and Edinburgh we're still talking 10 with lectures of 40 in history, but again, I don't think that makes a load of difference. I would stick a neck out here and say St Andrews probably has the best business school of the three, although Strathclyde's is still probably the best in Scotland.

Chemistboy, no longer active on TSR, who did his UG at St A, will tell you that for Chemistry, he reckons all of those three, plus Strath, are identical in terms of expectations and facilities. He's got a PhD and works in industry, so I'd take his word in that area, since I know little about it. Other areas, you may well be right for- although my argument has always been that it's unreasonable to expect multifaculty universities to be ahead of others in every respect, it's often the cast that in a head to head to head situation, one is better in some than the others and so on.

[Slumpy]

(Original post by 0404343m)
Yeah- there is a 'tough guy' Glaswegian culture among some, no doubt about it. Fact is, Glasgow's crime is driven by gangs and drugs in particularly bad pockets of the city (which are probably, on balance, more numerous and more dangerous than most other places). A perceived disrespecting in the wrong pub to the wrong guy (that's not just a Glasgow problem though) can end up with a bottle to the head, as seeming tough is paramount. That all being said, that's a different thing entirely to saying it's more dangerous to be a student, since they're pretty damn well unlikely to be in a gang owing people drug money in Possilpark, and they'll be spending more time in the West End or city centre where the worst thing that might happen is that someone spills his latté over your vintage tweed sports jacket, or the Sauvignon Blanc was corked in the last wine bar. Just like Edinburgh students aren't likely to hang about Sighthill for the fun of it, so too are Glasgow students unlikely to wander 30mins out of their way to find a boozer in Maryhill.

Courses wise: For my areas (broadly defined as History, Politics and Economics, although I know a bit about English Literature too), I'd say in terms of content and expectations, there is nothing to pick. Taking a load of students from a Glasgow or Edinburgh state school means as lecturers we have to get people into good habits that they might not have been taught at school, so it can be a bit more of a chore to get them up to speed initially, but once that hurdle is achieved, I've not noticed anything much. St Andrews has still managed to cap honours class sizes at 8 with lectures of 24, whereas at Glasgow and Edinburgh we're still talking 10 with lectures of 40 in history, but again, I don't think that makes a load of difference. I would stick a neck out here and say St Andrews probably has the best business school of the three, although Strathclyde's is still probably the best in Scotland.

Chemistboy, no longer active on TSR, who did his UG at St A, will tell you that for Chemistry, he reckons all of those three, plus Strath, are identical in terms of expectations and facilities. He's got a PhD and works in industry, so I'd take his word in that area, since I know little about it. Other areas, you may well be right for- although my argument has always been that it's unreasonable to expect multifaculty universities to be ahead of others in every respect, it's often the cast that in a head to head to head situation, one is better in some than the others and so on.

I blame me for sounding too English! That said, the dude was clearly hammered and a bit nuts. And anywhere seems mental compared to my hometown

Cannot comment at all on arts courses! Chemistry is one of the ones I'm told St A is a bit ahead on, but I'm thinking more research than UG (know almost nothing about most of the Scottish unis for UG!) Maths I think they're supposed to be pretty even (possibly Glasgow a bit behind the other 2, I forget), Physics St A possibly edges a bit, but I think it's all much of a muchness really, as with most of the top (that sounds more disparaging than it was meant to!)