What unis have the poshest students?

Well that's the thing... I actually do have a lot of connections now, I think. I'll explain my situation and each person and relationship in a PM later if you want. All I'll say is my environment would lead you to believe I'm advantaged, yet I feel I'm far from it.

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I would like to know the answer to this too!

University education at the best universities is meant to be research led, so that the latest developments are fed from the scientists and other academics back into the undergraduate and postgraduate courses. So on that front, having world class research departments does matter.

Also universities themselves measure themselves on their quality of research and levels of funding received from industry as a sign of how they are progressing against their peers overseas. Without high quality research a university can hardly be classified as an elite world class university based on just good teaching. Otherwise you may as well go to Luton, who claim to have a great teaching university.

A lot of ex-poly students do well for themselves by doing industrial placements at good companies like IBM and Glaxosmithkline. Granted they may not be good enough for Goldman Sachs, but not everyone wants to work in the City doing 80-100 hour weeks. A 40 hour week graduate job in a nice company like Microsoft is just as good to most, and gettable even for students from lesser universities.

Cardiff better than St Andrews? Why don't you ask both Unis? They would both probably laugh and say each is completely different in their missions, goals, and values. St Andrews is more exclusive but offers a lot of ancient language courses which is kind of odd. Cardiff is a brilliant 3rd choice uni to fall back on in case you don't get into a top 10-15 uni, and I rate it top 25 uni at the least (some would say top 20). The campus at Cardiff is exceptional, and the city is really nice and lively. From my own uni experiences, I can definitely say that I would rather trade the ego and reputation factor of somewhere like St Andrews, being located in the middle of nowhere, for the buzzing city of Cardiff. I went to neither, as I chose Nottingham.

I can understand why students from, say LSE, would snigger at Economics students from Coventry or Luton, but I don't understand why some students try this on with Russell Group Unis like Leeds and Cardiff, two excellent world class research universities and with plenty of alumni represented in top professions? St Andrews students and supporters sniggering at Cardiff is stupidity and insanity to the extreme.

They were hot at Nottingham and Royal Holloway. The latter had a lot of girls that reminded me of Kate Middleton in her youth.

I seriously doubt that research filters down to undergraduate level as quickly as you're making out; courses would have to be updated every single year if it were, taking up a hell of a lot of academics' time. St Andrew's does have high-quality research - if you look at the most recent RAE, they performed very well. They aren't all about ancient language courses and humanities; St Andrews has a very good reputation in maths, medicine and physics. You seem to have forgotten what the RG represents too. It was never intended to be a barometer of quality, just a lobbying group for universities with a large amount of research funding (i.e. membership was/is based on volume of research rather than quality). York and Durham, two of the country's top universities, were only allowed into the RG very recently. I agree that, due to the location, I never considered St Andrews, but that isn't relevant - we're talking about the academic merits of these institutions. I'm not "sniggering" at Cardiff - were it not for the difficulties that getting there for an interview would have posed, I'd have applied there instead of Nottingham. It is, however, widely acknowledged that it is, with the probable exception of QUB, the weakest member of the RG.


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QMC, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle , Glasgow and yes Manchester despite its street fame

I disagree about Newcastle and Manchester. Why Glasgow though?

I seriously doubt that research filters down to undergraduate level as quickly as you're making out; courses would have to be updated every single year if it were, taking up a hell of a lot of academics' time. St Andrew's does have high-quality research - if you look at the most recent RAE, they performed very well. They aren't all about ancient language courses and humanities; St Andrews has a very good reputation in maths, medicine and physics. You seem to have forgotten what the RG represents too. It was never intended to be a barometer of quality, just a lobbying group for universities with a large amount of research funding (i.e. membership was/is based on volume of research rather than quality). York and Durham, two of the country's top universities, were only allowed into the RG very recently. I agree that, due to the location, I never considered St Andrews, but that isn't relevant - we're talking about the academic merits of these institutions. I'm not "sniggering" at Cardiff - were it not for the difficulties that getting there for an interview would have posed, I'd have applied there instead of Nottingham. It is, however, widely acknowledged that it is, with the probable exception of QUB, the weakest member of the RG.


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You're free to do anything but all 3 consistently rank outside the top 20

You are sad enough to post drivel so you are.

You've got to remember it's 80% that come from the top 6/targets. There's another 20%. Mostly from semi-targets, such as Notts, KCL, Cass etc... They must have had contacts to either give them more workshops or experiences, or to actually get them into banking. But 6 figures+ is easily attainable in banking if you keep working, and get up to a senior position EVEN in the back office.

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Maybe Glasgow and Manchester does (which is surprising to me at least with Manchester) but Newcastle is usually around the 20 mark which isn't too bad - I'd say Newcastle and probably Manchester, maybe even Glasgow, at least belong in the average category of the Russell Group with universities like Liverpool, Cardiff, Queen Mary, QUB and maybe Sheffild and Birmingham being in the lower category with the expected lot being at the top category.

tweaking is just tweaking.

Minor crap

Tweaking can mean a lot of significance in the sciences.

. . . but Newcastle is usually around the 20 mark. ..

Around the 20 mark, as determined by what? Flawed newspaper league tables? Has it not dawned yet that these league tables are superficial and biased? You could add all kinds of different criteria, like Nobel Prize winners, RAE departments with 5* ratings, research citations globally, university finances, ratings as given by CEOs in top City firms etc. Where would Newcastle be in a league table then? Top 10? Top 30?

I have said before that I rate Newcastle a top 15-20 university, on the basis that it is in the Russell Group, and on general reputation from what I hear from graduates and recruiters. But even that can be viewed as flawed, as the reality is we can't possibly say Durham is better than Newcastle so easily with real facts and figures.

We get it, you don't like newspaper league tables! haha I just think that, even with their flaws, they're convenient. In terms of ranking universities, I would just go by my impression of how prestigious they are and that would tell me that Durham is better than Newcastle. You're right, it is hard to define the ranks of different universities. When I was choosing mine, I went for what I consider to be a top university (St Andrews) as my firm and what I consider to be a very good university (Newcastle) as my insurance. There's a whole bunch of categories that we can rate universities on but I think the ones that are used in the newspaper league tables are reasonably good categories in comparing universities.

Give an Eg ?

Contact the lecturers at Nottingham, they would be only too glad to help.