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PPE UNIVERSITY SUBJECT RANKING 2017 (Spreadsheet)

I couldn't find one of these online so I decided to make one myself and thought some of you guys might be interested. I took an average of all three discipline's rankings to give an estimate of how they'd rank. I've also added in the percentage of offers usually given per applicant.

*I have left out certain specific grades needed. For instance, most require an A in maths GCSE. Southampton, a B in maths AS, LSE an A* in Maths A-level and I can't really think of anymore off the top of my head.

**If you're interested in seeing the rankings I made for a combined honours in Philosophy and Politics (Or just have any other questions in general), then drop me a message or sth.
Uni rank.png
Hope this helps!
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 1
durham?
Reply 2
Original post by jackm7
durham?

A*AA typical offer, would rank in between Exeter and Lancaster with an average of 8 across the three subjects (5, 7, 12 in Politics, Econ and Philosophy respectively). % applicants receiving offers 53%. Hmu if you would like any more.
Reply 3
Original post by Tols
I couldn't find one of these online so I decided to make one myself and thought some of you guys might be interested. I took an average of all three discipline's rankings to give an estimate of how they'd rank. I've also added in the percentage of offers usually given per applicant.

*I have left out certain specific grades needed. For instance, most require an A in maths GCSE. Southampton, a B in maths AS, LSE an A* in Maths A-level and I can't really think of anymore off the top of my head.

**If you're interested in seeing the rankings I made for a combined honours in Philosophy and Politics (Or just have any other questions in general), then drop me a message or sth.
Uni rank.png
Hope this helps!


Interesting..
Reply 4
How have u worked out offers per applicant?
Reply 5
Original post by boinz
How have u worked out offers per applicant?


It's on the whichuniversity website
Original post by Tols
I couldn't find one of these online so I decided to make one myself and thought some of you guys might be interested. I took an average of all three discipline's rankings to give an estimate of how they'd rank. I've also added in the percentage of offers usually given per applicant.

*I have left out certain specific grades needed. For instance, most require an A in maths GCSE. Southampton, a B in maths AS, LSE an A* in Maths A-level and I can't really think of anymore off the top of my head.

**If you're interested in seeing the rankings I made for a combined honours in Philosophy and Politics (Or just have any other questions in general), then drop me a message or sth.
Uni rank.png
Hope this helps!


Hmm..informative.Thank you.But in KCL's website they want A*AA instead of 3As as provided in your table data above.So does it mean that they might want 3As as conditional offers instead of A*AA?
I got a conditional offer at Exeter for PPE, but was not admitted at Warwick/UCL
I wonder whether I should not try to get in another easier course at Warwick/ UCL/Bath like Politics & International Studies instead
Would an easier course at a more well known university be better regarded than a PPE course at Exeter ? knowing that I want to do after is probably a Master Program in Business Management
Can anyone advise ?
Reply 8
Original post by Tols
I couldn't find one of these online so I decided to make one myself and thought some of you guys might be interested. I took an average of all three discipline's rankings to give an estimate of how they'd rank. I've also added in the percentage of offers usually given per applicant.

*I have left out certain specific grades needed. For instance, most require an A in maths GCSE. Southampton, a B in maths AS, LSE an A* in Maths A-level and I can't really think of anymore off the top of my head.

**If you're interested in seeing the rankings I made for a combined honours in Philosophy and Politics (Or just have any other questions in general), then drop me a message or sth.
Uni rank.png
Hope this helps!


You should clarify which university ranking table you are using.
While I can appreciate the idea of this sort of league table, it's fundamentally flawed as simply averaging the strengths of the individual courses doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of the PPE course.

This is due to a variety of factors but the main one being, many PPE courses (particularly at the "top" universities) are not offered as a multidepartmental course, but offered through a single department with supplementary teaching. For example, the UCL PPE course is through the public policy institute, primarily a graduate department, and as I understand the PPE economics courses are specifically for the PPE course, not shared with the economics course.

In fact the common thread seems to be that the PPE course is done through a poltiics/public policy/political economy department, borrowing courses/papers from philosophy and other courses within the department, with "bespoke" economics courses specifically for the PPE degree. LSE is a major exception as the non seminar courses are all offered by the individual departments.

This does largely benefit PPE students if it's done in this way, as then administration and teaching is centralised to a degree rather than fragmented, but often the economics portions don't reach the same level of mathematical sophistication as single subject economics at the top universities (although certainly it's likely to be significantly more mathematical than e.g. A-level economics at most, and certainly at the top options).

Also, your table solely considers entry requirements and more or less derives prestige from how hard it is to get into. Student satistfaction, while much maligned on TSR, is an important indicator of the quality of the course and the teaching on it, and graduate job rates and also details of WHERE graduates are placed gives much more information into how much students benefit from the course after graduating. While entry requirements often correlate to this, it's not a causal relationship. Also a number of newer courses being offered have "inflated" entry requirements because PPE has a high reputation from the original Oxford course, despite there being no indication whether these newer copycat courses provide anywhere near the benefits of that course (or similar ones that came into being less recently and are subsequently more established; you see the same thing with natural sciences courses as well).

So, I encourage you to continue developing this but I would urge you to re-evaluate your data and tweak your methodologies somewhat :tongue:
Liverpool are starting PPE this year, too.

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