Most popular and desired UK universities by students on TSR

Not a another post that look down at working class people who make it in to higher education and go to their local university or university centre.

You can actually use thread activities on TSR to judge the universities potential students tend to strongly desire to go to by assessing the number of thread pages created on the annual applicants' pages on TSR.

It is on these threads you see the universities with the hihhest activities in regards to applicants chatting about going there, hoping to get offers from, having anxieties waiting for decisions, celebrating getting offers and expressing disheartenment about rejections.

I first saw it done here:
https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/king-s-college-london-in-the-us/2085560/14

And I just did the one for 2023 to create this table:



The table shows hardly any fluctuation in the Top 2, Top 7 and Top 11 most popular and desired universities for offers.

Top 2 is obviously Oxbridge
Top 7 adds LSE, UCL, KCL, Durham and Imperial
Top 11 further adds Edinburgh, St Andrews, Warwick and Bristol

It is when one starts going beyond the Top 11 that the fluctuation increases e.g. Bath is not in the Top 20 in 2020 applicants, but gets to Top 10 in 2023; Birmingham did not make it to the Top 20 in 2022 but is a steady 18th in other years.

The likes of Sheffield, QMUL, Lancaster, Strathclyde, Cardiff and Southampton sneak once in a while into the Top 20, but are not regulars.

Beyond the Top 30, the fluctuations exacerbate and the averages dovetail; QMUL, Southampton, Strathclyde, Cardiff, SOAS, Newcastle, Lancaster, Aberdeen, QUB will make up part of the Top 30; the final university of the Top 30 will be a toss up.

Not a another post that look down at working class people who make it in to higher education and go to their local university or university centre. While working part time and having help out at home.

Not a another post that look down at working class people who make it in to higher education and go to their local university or university centre. While working part time and having help out at home.

Not really, the post looks quite statistical and analytical. OP at no point expresses disdain for lower ranked universities, just referring to the universities that are popular on TSR. Unless you're arguing that TSR in itself is looking down at working class people.

Your find that those universities have almost no working class white students and university centre together with low ranking universities have almost all students from working class white background

Many people on TRS look down on people from non top level universities.

My Uni was too cool to be on TSR, or on stupid lists, or be properly accredited.

Not a another post that look down at working class people who make it in to higher education and go to their local university or university centre. While working part time and having help out at home.

Not really, the post looks quite statistical and analytical. OP at no point expresses disdain for lower ranked universities, just referring to the universities that are popular on TSR. Unless you're arguing that TSR in itself is looking down at working class people.

Why # of threads and not # of posts or views or users posting on the main thread?

Volume of threads doesn’t match popularity - just implies lots of new TSR members starting threads rather than applicants engaging on the main threads.

The data doesn't really say much of anything because the TSR userbase is not reflective of the overall population of students considering university study. It tends to attract a much higher proportion of highly achieving and/or highly aiming students that do target universities which tend to be conventionally considered as "prestigious". Just because there are not as many students who use TSR that are looking to study e.g. visual or performing arts, allied healthcare professions, etc, which are normally not available at those kinds of universities, does not mean that there aren't very large numbers of said students across the UK to start with.

All this data really tells you is which universities TSR users make threads about the most. Which is fairly obvious to anyone who has used the site for more than a single application cycle anyway and doesn't really add much to one's understanding of TSR...

So 2 non applicants having an argument about the worst thing about a university in the applicant thread for multiple pages and you assume that means a university is more popular and desired.

**** methodology.