Least prestigious Russell Group universities.

I'm surprised Qub gets such a bad review. It has a fantastic medical school and is pretty research intensive. It did pretty well in Ref. I don't think it's that bad a university.

From south east asia here, and I vouch for this. They love QMUL here like its not even funny. I think it has something to do with being in London, and generally other London unis (such as LSE, UCL, KCL) are pretty good so perhaps its a disillusion that QMUL is similarly good

Well, it is of quite a good standard, despite what you may think of it (although I agree that 'prestige' wise it isn't on the same level as LSE). Regarding your bolded statement, I don't really see much evidence of it. Most people have heard of Oxbridge and LSE in SEA, the rest of the unis, not so much.

Because it's about research. That's what determines a Russell Group uni.

The amount of people who don't know that are shocking.

Well I guess I can't really give you evidence, but I guess I can narrow down my statement to people I know. They seem to have an idea that only the London unis (plus oxbridge of course) are good in UK, and the rest aren't as good, and that somehow makes them place QMUL over the other UK unis

Eh, I agree Liverpool isn't one of the best but it honestly doesn't deserve the amount of criticism it sometimes receives. I couldn't be happier there and do not regret my choice at all

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Can't comment on that, but it's definitely not the worst of the RGs. I heard nottingham and manchester are pretty popular(especially manchester). There's also other unis in london as well, so I guess the factors like a combination of location + of good standard of education + of relatively high ranking internationally could be the reason why it's more popular than other good UK unis, which don't have as good a location.

Yeah m8 cambridge is **** isn't it

QUB, Liverpool, Newcastle/Sheffield/Leeds

Why does everyone really put down newcastle?

I had a nosy look at your user-profile and see that you're at Exeter. This is happy circumstance because I did my first degree at York and - for all that they've both allowed themselves to be seduced - these are two of the dozen or so universities with best reason to be peeved at the Russell Group and its agenda setting.

The Russell Group from its inception billed itself as representing 'the leading Research-Intensive universities'. And that was naughty since this was true only if parsed as 'The research-intensive universities leading the race to attract money understood as a brute sum rather than adjusted for size and partitioned by faculty', which is how no-one would parse that.

York, Exeter, Durham, Bath and so on were rightly cheesed. The notion that the quality of research activity could sensibly be measured like this seemed outrageous, some several of these were then a third of the size of some of the RG institutions and had a very strong bias toward the arts and social sciences rather than medicine, pharmacy and robotics. Well of course they weren't going to be attracting as much money if that was only an aggregate amount.

The 1994 group was set up solely to counter this narrative but the PR battle was lost as the Russell Group, and especially its lesser lights, kept pushing the notion that these were, yes, 'the leading research-intensive universities'. It was a maddening time to be a York or Exeter graduate conscious that the work being done at your alma mater was quite as good as at half the RG but that a popular imagination couldn't be convinced of it because persuaded that research money = research quality = prestige.

It's not about how 'happy' you are there it's about how good the university is

Can't comment on that, but it's definitely not the worst of the RGs. I heard nottingham and manchester are pretty popular(especially manchester). There's also other unis in london as well, so I guess the factors like a combination of location + of good standard of education + of relatively high ranking internationally could be the reason why it's more popular than other good UK unis, which don't have as good a location.

Predictable. Every time this topic comes up you'll find the same less fashionable, former industrial cities mentioned - namely QUB and Liverpool., as TSR's largely southern and middle class members can't get past old stereotypes when judging the universities .

Admittedly this is less true of Newcastle these last ten years, which has established itself as a party and cultural centre and has a high independent school intake. But it is still nonetheless provincial, and some still have negative perceptions or stereotypical views of the city - as evidenced by me showing a picture of Grey Street on this site years ago, and people being amazed at its architecture and "really surprised" such streets exist in Newcastle. I don't know if they were expecting lines of cardboard boxes or soot covered timber buildings...

I can see no reason why Newcastle, Sheffield or Leeds are significantly weaker than Durham, Nottingham or Bristol, and I say this as a Durham graduate. Besides, comparing universities (who have different strengths) is so difficult anyway.



See my comment above, the same is true of Liverpool, Belfast and others.

I think Newcastle's biggest problem in these threads is that, as it's strength as a medical school is so well known, people often perpetuate the stereotype that it's only world class in medicine. Its other strengths are in the shadow of its medical school. Also the high independent school intake perhaps has an effect. I once heard it described by one member as "a place for thick Harrowians who couldn't get into anywhere better" - speaking of the law department specifically, rather than the university at large.

Well actually, happiness is very important anyway, it isn't a bad university at all and is one of very few to offer my course, which I feel has been taught very well.

I think it's quite absurd how many of you are calling some Russell Group universities "meh" when they're world class. The amount of snobbery and hyperbolic inaccuracies spewed on this thread is disgusting. Someone has literally questioned whether they want to go to QMUL because a plethora of kids on here not even at university think they have the authority to attenuate the quality of institutions that help get people into the most respected professions, solely because tabloid rankings based on measures that have no purpose in dictating the calibre of a university have allocated them a number.

Grow up.

Southern middle class? I'm not even british...

U need to gro. Up in the real world when you need to get a job and pay the bills instead of being a layabout.

Only then will you know the value of a degree and university...nothing to do with snobbery. Its about being forward-looking aka mature

It wasn't targeted specifically at you, just a general remark. Though just because you aren't British doesn't mean to say you can't be influenced by such views, or be influenced in other ways (such as chosing less internationally famous cities).



That's exactly the point, I don't pick any. The quality of education, particularly at undergraduate level, is broadly comparable across the Russell Group universities in my experience. All will have their own strengths and weakeness'. It's absurd to compare what can be such radically different universities, with such varying strengths.

As someone who has attended Durham, and is familiar with Newcastle, Sheffield, and several other RG universities, I don't know what the likes of Durham are doing which makes them so special in the eyes of those commenting in this thread.

I also don't see what makes people, particularly teenagers, so confident in proclaiming universities x, y and z to be "weaker" than the rest. Though admittedly the original question was "least prestigious", and there's a subtle difference between this and "weakest".

If we were to compare them in more precise terms, things might be different.

Well for 90% of the international applicants, there are 3 types of unis: 1. Oxbridge, 2.Imperial, LSE, UCL and maybe KCL and 3. Manchester, Birmingham - most popular and the rest, Durham and Warwick are only a big deal for brits,I never even heard of them before seeing them on TSR.