How do you know if a uni's good or bad without refering to league tables?

QAA teaching reports, RAE, opinions of current and former students, course content, whether the courses are professional accredited or not (if relevant)....

People chose universities before 1993 without significant difficulty.

QAA teaching reports, RAE, opinions of current and former students, course content, whether the courses are professional accredited or not (if relevant)....

People chose universities before 1993 without significant difficulty.

Hard to do that and get unbiased results but

Hard to do that and get unbiased results but

As stated by nulli tertius there are rarely, if ever, unbiased opinions. This is why an applicant needs to try and find a range of opinions and speak to a reasonable number.

You're suggesting that current students will often be biased and this is often the case. But I think I'm capable of offering an honest and frank opinion about my university and departments (as you're probably aware ) including areas others will possibly neglect such as disability support. I don't always use the most glowing of terms when discussing one department in particular but I am, on the whole, reasonably positive. I certainly know that they are opinions people have taken on board and has partly influenced their decision. I don't know how many SGIA applicants I spoke to actually chose Durham in the end )hopefully not many ) but most philosophy applicants did chose Durham and have found my account to be broadly accurate. Obviously accounting forvery recent changes in the departments and for particularly subjective factors (how interesting certain modules are).

I think plenty of former students who can, now they've put their student days behind them and can step back and give a fair but critical overview of what the university is like and how they feel it's helped them develop.

For those of you who think the league tables aren't worth the paper their printed on, what other methos can you use for judging whether or not a uni's any good?

1) How often it's mentioned in the news and media concerning research. Of course this depends on how often you follow current affairs and what media you obtain
2) Research Assessment Exercise scores

For those of you who think the league tables aren't worth the paper their printed on, what other methos can you use for judging whether or not a uni's any good?

Research doesn't mean squat in terms of whether it's good university to study at. It could be the best research university in the world but the worst teaching university, and in the end, isn't the teaching what you go there for?

(I know that's an extreme example, there probably is no university like that, but in theory there could be.)

Exactly. The best research universities in the world are 99.9% of the time the best universities in the world full stop. High quality research trickles down into high quality teaching, and if that isn't the case then it hardly matters - top students are very much capable of independent study and research - isn't that what university is about? And I doubt students aspire to top universities because of the teaching; it's because of the brand name, prestige and reputation that goes with it.

I still don't agree. There are far more important things to be looking for than the research standard.