What unis have the poshest students?

I think there are several reasons.

Firstly, St Andrews can be quite a trek to get to if you're not based around the area, and lots of the employers in the aforementioned aren't. Secondly, it has a fairly limited subject choice, especially in more vocational areas. And lastly, it has a small number of students.

If you're one of the "top 100", i.e. you're a well known brand name seeking to recruit large numbers of graduates, going to St Andrews doesn't give you as much bang for your buck as many of the large city universities, because it's difficult getting there, and when you arrive you'll only be able to reach out to a relatively small amount of students. I believe that Strathclyde has the biggest careers fair in Scotland, and as a university it is quite the opposite of St Andrews (large, in a city and with lots of students studying subjects favoured by employers).

Thus, I don't really think that the ranking of "targets" with the "top 100" graduate employers correlates much with employer reputation, if such a thing could ever be derived.

I think it is an important performance indicator for a university nevertheless. Both Nottingham and Manchester take these kinds of league tables very seriously, and their Vice Chancellors discuss them passionately. About 60% of the students at St Andrews are from a state school background, and the majority of these will need a well paid job as soon as they graduate.

Well obviously both Nottingham and Manchester take seriously the league tables which happen to put them at the top

They aren't 'important performance indicators' at all, quite simply for the reasons Smack pointed out - it has little to do with the performance of universities.

I don't know whether you're actually a Nottingham-grad, or whether you're actually here solely to promote for the university with any nonsense argument - either way, what you're currently doing doesn't put Nottingham in a good light at all.

Stating the facts and the truth is all that matters.

The fact is that on that table Nottingham and Manchester are at the top. The truth of the matter actually is that table isn't a league table and is largely based on laughable factors such as the size of the pool of current students, and how "off the beaten track" the university is location wise. Just because a report was published with a ranking of universities based on how many employers they attract at career fairs, it doesn't automatically mean it should be used as a league table of how good universities are.

I think it is an important performance indicator for a university nevertheless. Both Nottingham and Manchester take these kinds of league tables very seriously, and their Vice Chancellors discuss them passionately. About 60% of the students at St Andrews are from a state school background, and the majority of these will need a well paid job as soon as they graduate. Even when you take all the excuses into account, one would expect St Andrews to be ranked a bit higher than it is, top 20 as with Durham and Exeter at least.

I believe I used the QS World Rankings to gain some insight into how Nottingham was performing, not the top 100 graduate employer league table. Likewise, Nottingham uses the QS World Rankings as one of their preferred performance indicators. The Vice Chancellor even stated in his 2010-2015 strategic plan that he wanted the university to be UK top 10 and World top 50 by the end of 2015, and they are not too far from that goal (currently 14th and 75th respectively).

I think the point has now been made a dozen times that Nottingham is a top 11-15 university in the UK and World top 75 as things stand, and that in the near future it could break into the UK top 10 again, back where it belongs. So it will now be laid to rest.

The thread topic was about which universities have the poshest students. That has to be Oxbridge, St Andrews, Durham and Bristol, as they draw in the most students from the top 10% of private schools and colleges. LSE, UCL and Imperial must also be there or there abouts. The likes of Nottingham, KCL, Exeter, Edinburgh Manchester, Leeds etc pick up a fair amount of the next tier of private school kids in droves.

St Andrews is ranked outside the top 25 for being a target university with the top 100 graduate recruiters, which you can see in my earlier post. But there may be some reasons to this lack of presence in the top 25, in that many of the students who go to St Andrews are from very rich families, and have attended Eton or Harrow previously. They will take their time on the aftermath of university life. Not everyone has that luxury.

I think there are several reasons.

Firstly, St Andrews can be quite a trek to get to if you're not based around the area, and lots of the employers in the aforementioned aren't. Secondly, it has a fairly limited subject choice, especially in more vocational areas. And lastly, it has a small number of students.

If you're one of the "top 100", i.e. you're a well known brand name seeking to recruit large numbers of graduates, going to St Andrews doesn't give you as much bang for your buck as many of the large city universities, because it's difficult getting there, and when you arrive you'll only be able to reach out to a relatively small amount of students. I believe that Strathclyde has the biggest careers fair in Scotland, and as a university it is quite the opposite of St Andrews (large, in a city and with lots of students studying subjects favoured by employers).

Thus, I don't really think that the ranking of "targets" with the "top 100" graduate employers correlates much with employer reputation, if such a thing could ever be derived.

I think it is an important performance indicator for a university nevertheless. Both Nottingham and Manchester take these kinds of league tables very seriously, and their Vice Chancellors discuss them passionately. About 60% of the students at St Andrews are from a state school background, and the majority of these will need a well paid job as soon as they graduate. Even when you take all the excuses into account, one would expect St Andrews to be ranked a bit higher than it is, top 20 as with Durham and Exeter at least.

I think it is an important performance indicator for a university nevertheless.

I don't. Important performance indicators of a university would be, but not limited to, teaching scores, research performance, student satisfaction, facilities spending, etc., none of which employers particularly care about. As I said, when choosing which campuses to visit, most employers are mainly concerned with going somewhere that's at least half decent and isn't a hassle to get to, where they can reach out to a large amount of students preferably with the relevant skills they're looking for.

I assume you are talking about generic employers and not banks and accountants ?

What's a "generic" employer?