Is Leicester really a top 20 university as they claim?

It takes a few years post graduation to truly understand which are the best universities. All those 17-18 year olds who download league tables and go by hearsay will have a very different and more informed view in 5-10 years time. Some will be lucky in that they did genuinely choose a reputable RG university, others will not be so lucky and will realise they were robbed by media league tables by attending Lancaster instead of Leeds or Manchester or Durham.

Likewise, many students in a few years will realise their degree subject was the wrong choice, and they wished they did something more relevant to employment.

where did you do your undergraduate degree?

I think this is a good place to end the thread. I feel like it's repeating itself over and over.

This guy is such a ****ing troll. Report and move on.

I must say I'm not quite clear why you are spending so much time and effort arguing a pretty pointless thesis, especially as it appears that you have no personal experience of the university to draw on to inform your opinion.

Membership of the Russell Group does not confer excellence, nor do most employers take a blind bit of notice whether an applicant graduated from one of its member universities or not. What employers are looking for is evidence that the applicant made the most of their time at university, achieving a good degree and acquiring life and other skills that are valuable in the workplace. For the most part they really don't care if the degree is in Widget-Fitting or awarded by DuckPond University. Of course there are exceptions, but what I've said is generally true of most graduate schemes and employers recruiting to jobs where a graduate is required.

All I've seen from you in this thread - and, as I say, I am puzzled as to why you made the effort to start it off at all - is assertions that in your opinion Leicester's ranking in some of the published league tables is unjustified. I see nothing that tells me you are qualified to make those assertions.

Prospective or current students of Leicester reading this should be reassured that they are signed up for a good university and that their prospects after graduation will be as good as anyone else's. After all, there are unemployed Oxbridge graduates out there, while graduates from so-called 'lesser' universities have walked in to well-paid jobs with serious career development opportunities.

I have to disagree with you on pretty much all your points. The top firms such as IBM, PwC, Microsoft etc tend to favour the RG universities, they are seen as the most respected universities. Likewise, Oxbridge also favour them for posgrad applications.

I would suggest that the thread be closed, as it has reached the climax.

'Tend to favour the RG universities' does not mean 'totally ignore graduates from non RG universities'. The 'top firms' that you mention form a pretty small percentage of employers, which of course also include the public sector - and they certainly don't obsess about whether their applicants graduated from an RG university.

In the Complete University Guide they are #19, previously #16.
http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings

In the Sunday Times Rankings they are #14. Previously #17.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/University_Guide/

icu.org has Leicester at #16.
http://www.4icu.org/gb/

In the Guardian rankings they are #21 which is close, previously they were #13.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2014/jun/02/university-league-tables-2015-the-complete-list

On FindTheBest.co.uk they are #22 which is close.
http://universities.findthebest.co.uk/

So I'd say they still deserve that claim. In most world rankings I've seen they are much higher than Bath in fact.

I have to disagree with you on pretty much all your points. The top firms such as IBM, PwC, Microsoft etc tend to favour the RG universities, they are seen as the most respected universities. Likewise, Oxbridge also favour them for posgrad applications.

I would suggest that the thread be closed, as it has reached the climax. Leicester openly claim to be top 20, and I say they are wrong to claim that, as there is no evidence to support that assertion.

I think the problem is that your generalisation of the Russel Group universities just equates to the higher ranking universities, which aren't all in the Russel Group. I come form Lancaster and I guarantee that not being in the Russel Group by no means made it more difficult for Lancaster graduates to gain jobs.

At the end of the day, students can go wherever they want to go, it is they who live with the consequences. All I would suggest is that they do think carefully about the reputation of the university, and also check with employers in the field that they want to work in that it is reputable in their eyes. I know one guy who wrote to the British Pharmaceutical Association and they told him Leeds was best for Chemistry. I'm sure Oxbridge would have been a touch annoyed about that, but they aren't the best in every subject. If you get AAB or higher, you definitely should be aiming for a university in the RG bracket, and a few others around it. There is a lot of snobbery out there, and it stays with you for life.

Young 17-18 year old students download newspaper league tables and base their perceptions on such flawed data, and zero weighting is given on academic strength. The only league tables that top universities like Durham Nottingham and St Andrews respect are the QS World Rankings, as they measure academic strength. Durham, Nottingham, and St Andrews all quote them in their prospectuses. None of them do amazingly well in them, all are top 100 world universities (top 1%). Leicester is top 2% (around top 200).

Is Leicester a top 20 university? At this moment in time, based on academic strength and overall reputation, I would say not. That claim is more worthy for KCL, York, Edinburgh, Newcastle etc. Is Leicester a good university that can open as many doors for their graduates as most in the Russell Group? Probably, yes, only in the most competitive careers like Law and Investment Banking will this not be quite the case.

I agree with you. I also agree in a lot of cases the QS ranking can be a good measure of the reputation of a university as it is based on more broad measures than many of the 'normal' league tables (That are based pretty much on undergraduate aspects+research rating).