So I've been looking through the Guardian's rankings, and I found that they were often completely different to what I expected, Physics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2012/may/22/university-guide-physics being an example.
1 Oxford 100.0 93 90 79 9.4 9 621 6 77
2 Lancaster 96.5 96 96 91 7.6 9 440 8 66
3 St Andrews 92.1 99 96 72 9.8 8 563 3 81
4 Manchester 90.0 96 96 74 11.1 9 495 7 70
5 Birmingham 89.9 94 89 72 10.0 8 503 6 75
6 Liverpool 88.2 96 96 75 8.8 10 401 6 73
7 UCL 86.8 91 87 66 8.2 9 509 8 75
8 Sussex 84.8 96 95 87 8.9 3 409 9 65
9 Edinburgh 83.3 94 89 67 11.6 10 514 7 64
10 Durham 82.5 92 87 71 11.2 4 574 6 80
11 Leeds 82.3 93 90 77 12.3 4 435 4 89
12 Imperial College 81.8 87 82 52 10.2 8 588 7 78
13 Royal Holloway 80.0 92 90 77 8.2 6 352 6
14 Warwick 75.2 83 83 66 13.3 7 528 6 80
So apparently Lancaster, Manchester, Birmingham,
Liverpool, Sussex and Leeds are all better than Imperial?
I realised that the requirements for a high ranking have *nothing* to do with the quality of the university (as in, how good in terms of difficulty of content you are studying) - it's all rubbish like "satisfied with teaching", "satisfied with course" etc. How on earth can Imperial (a sciences university) be six places further down in the UK than it is worldwide?
Rankings all seem to be completely messed up - looking worldwide, apparently Leeds, KCL and Manchester outdo Durham and Warwick in the Times' reputation rankings.
How much attention do employers pay to rankings?
If, for example, I took Theoretical Physics at UCL, I would have thought that should be considered as one of the top 4-5 in the country, and top 10-20 in the world. A quick peek at rankings, however, tells me otherwise, with what I thought to be 'lesser' universities coming higher up.
If I've said anything stupid, please don't neg, just explain it to me as this is a serious question.