Bath, Leeds or Nottingham?? Which is best??

I am on a gap year so have the following confirmed places. Need help deciding. Bath - Economics
Leeds - Economics
Nottingham- Industrial Economics

Which will be best to get into Investment Banking or which is best for Economics?

Bath (if you do a placement) > Nottingham > Leeds

Hi thanks for the reply. My only concern with Bath is the nightlife and social aspect. I am a very social person and really enjoy going out. I am wondering if Nottingham or Leeds might be better for me. Do you think studying Industrial Economics at Nottingham is as respected as straight Econ. What do you think would be best out of Nottingham with indstrial economics or leeds with pure economics? Thanks

For the degree: Bath > Notts >>>>> Leeds
For careers: Bath = Notts >> Leeds (Bath might be slightly better if you get a decent placement year).
For nightlife: Leeds > Notts > Bath

It depends on what your preferences are, you can still have a very good social life at places like Bath and Nottingham, plus they are much better for Econ. I would overall probably recommend Bath slightly more than Notts just because it's straight Econ and they have a very good placement scheme even though Notts place slightly more into IB.

Why is Leeds the last one academic wise? From what I found:

Leeds = 91st (QS) 160th (Times) Russell Group, top 10 business schools, triple accredited
Notts = 99th (QS) 158th (Times) Russell Group
Bath = 173rd (QS) 201-250th (Times), top 10 business schools

I don’t know why people don’t consider Leeds as one of the top unis. Like I’m not arguing or anything, just out of curiosity since I’m not from the UK but academic wise it seems to be a really good uni and here on tsr it’s always sth>sth>Leeds

Firstly I would take the rankings with not just a pinch but a tonne of salt, how they derive the rankings is very dubious when you actually look into it.

Secondly, Leeds doesn't even have a proper department for economics, it's within the business school which tells you a lot along with the comparatively more limited list of optional modules on the economics course. Whereas Bath and Nottingham have much larger departments = more money and funding = better academics = better reputation and sometimes better teaching.

Nottingham and Bath also have a long history of producing strong economics grads whereas I wouldn't say Leeds do. When I've worked as a professional economists there were some bath and Notts grads but hardly any from Leeds. Leeds is best known as a party university with a good nightlife, don't get me wrong, there's lots of smart people and strong departments at Leeds uni, it's just most UK people think of the nightlife when they think of Leeds uni.

I get your point, although I think that rankings, russell group and triple accreditation must indicate something. Their business related degrees’ requirements are often AAA. It ranks high within employers’ likeability too. I understand that it’s a fairly young uni without long history but so is Warwick for example and it’s still a very reputable uni. I get that Leeds is known for partying but isn’t it great to have good academic reputation and social life too?

Although, since you’ve worked as an economist, what unis do employers like and respect a lot?

Why is Leeds the last one academic wise? From what I found:

Leeds = 91st (QS) 160th (Times) Russell Group, top 10 business schools, triple accredited
Notts = 99th (QS) 158th (Times) Russell Group
Bath = 173rd (QS) 201-250th (Times), top 10 business schools

I don’t know why people don’t consider Leeds as one of the top unis. Like I’m not arguing or anything, just out of curiosity since I’m not from the UK but academic wise it seems to be a really good uni and here on tsr it’s always sth>sth>Leeds

You've got research how these things like rankings, accreditations and uni groups are constructed to be able to interpret them properly. And I don't mean that in an offensive way, most people don't and they're very opaque to students.

Firstly let's take the rankings, often these are made up of some good predictors of quality and some less good ones. One metric is average entry tariff, this is a fairly useful one because it indicates the past grades of your classmates, it's limited by the fact that uni is very different to school so it's not a perfect relationship between who does well at school and uni. Secondly there's things like employability, obviously sounds good but it doesn't actually take into account what kind of jobs people are getting, are they even jobs relevant to the course or just any job. Student satisfaction, this is by far the worse one, typically there is a negative relationship between satisfaction and quality of degree because students find rigorous courses tough but that doesn't make them bad degrees (e.g. LSE often has the lowest satisfaction for example). There's often also a research ranking, this has nothing to do with undergrad at all so not really relevant. So you can start to see why for undergraduate courses the rankings are very very flawed, which is why rankings like the guardian have UCL at 25th for Economics and LSE at 13th even though they're both in the top 3.

Secondly, being part of the Russell group means that these unis produce a lot of research (quality and volume). Obviously this is a good thing if you have lecturers who are leaders in their fields. Naturally research isn't a big part of undergraduate degrees and becomes more important at postgrad level, along with the fact that top researchers aren't always good/nice teachers, they often have less time for you. So there are pros and cons of being in the Russell group but generally a good thing.

Thirdly business school accreditation, you often here unis say "our business school has a triple accreditation". If they're saying this for an economics course this is a bad thing. Economics departments within business schools are not a good thing at all, shows the department is too small to be a standalone. Notice how all of the top unis have separate economics departments and business schools? Obviously if you're doing a business school subject like accountancy, business, finance, marketing, etc then the accreditations are important but for economics it's useless advertising that they use to attract you. Think of it this way, the accreditations are from organisations like ACA, CIMA, etc which are accounting qualification bodies, so if you do these courses, often you get exemptions from accountancy/actuarial exams. Therefore for economics this is completely useless, unless you want to do accountancy after an Econ degree?

The best way to figure out the good unis for what you want to do is to look at people on LinkedIn who currently work in the jobs you're interested in and see what unis they went to. For example if you want to be an economist, just search economists, click on lots of profiles and you'll get a good idea of real good unis, it's clear evidence rather than university marketing.

In terms of what unis employers of economists like and respect, there's the top5 (Oxbridge, LSE, UCL and Warwick) next you've got the group of pretty good unis (Bristol, Durham, Nottingham, Bath, Edinburgh, maybe St Andrews, Exeter & Manchester at a push). Then there's the group below like Leeds, Sheffield, Glasgow, Southampton, Birmingham, etc so still solid unis. Then you get some ones that people don't really know about but place really well for their low rankings (this is due to either being located next to a big economics employers or strong employer links) and these are places like Birkbeck, Queen's University Belfast, Sussex and Essex (very strong for postgrad so has good faculty).

Apologies for the long msg but hopefully this helps a bit to actually understand what all these terms universities throw at you actually mean. Personally I think it's very misleading for unis to say all these things to 17&18yr olds who will never be able to know this stuff by themselves. There's a lot more to say on stuff like the rankings and the Russell group as the implications for an undergrad degree are quite nuanced and complicated but yeah hopefully this helps!

Thank you for such deep analysis. Definitely helpful for someone who’s not from the UK, like me. I myself was looking for a business mamagement degree so I focused more on the business school rather than economics department. I am just a bit sceptical when people say that the social life aspect doesn’t matter at all, because in case of Leeds you get a wide range of socities, internships, the city is big and fun to spend your youth in and on top of that (well maybe it’s no Oxford) but it is still reputable and good academic wise. So, at the end of the day, would it really make a difference if I got a business degree from Leeds or Durham, where in case of Durham I wouldn’t have a nice student life and experience? Other than my grandma thinking Durham is more prestigious, which is not my case because I’m not British so no UK unis ring a bell to my grandma other than Oxbridge maybe hah

Again, I’m not from the UK so that’s why I might not entirely understand the “you should choose this over that uni” opinions (excluding oxbridge because it’s exceptional). In my country there’s no such hierarchy, all unis are on a good level and well seen by employers

Thank you for such deep analysis. Definitely helpful for someone who’s not from the UK, like me. I myself was looking for a business mamagement degree so I focused more on the business school rather than economics department. I am just a bit sceptical when people say that the social life aspect doesn’t matter at all, because in case of Leeds you get a wide range of socities, internships, the city is big and fun to spend your youth in and on top of that (well maybe it’s no Oxford) but it is still reputable and good academic wise. So, at the end of the day, would it really make a difference if I got a business degree from Leeds or Durham, where in case of Durham I wouldn’t have a nice student life and experience? Other than my grandma thinking Durham is more prestigious, which is not my case because I’m not British so no UK unis ring a bell to my grandma other than Oxbridge maybe hah

Again, I’m not from the UK so that’s why I might not entirely understand the “you should choose this over that uni” opinions (excluding oxbridge because it’s exceptional). In my country there’s no such hierarchy, all unis are on a good level and well seen by employers

Durham is not more prestigious than Leeds - where is the evidence that it is? The academics at Leeds aren't going to be any worse than those at Durham. Neither will the teaching or research, or the facilities.

Durham may be a bit over-rated but it is much more prestigious than Leeds.

Durham may be a bit over-rated but it is much more prestigious than Leeds.

Why? Because it has a Norman Cathedral?

Yeah I agree with this poster, Durham is the third oldest English university and has been broadly a top 5-7 university for almost 200yrs in most subjects despite its location.

Now I wouldn't call it one of the elites, definitely a tier below Oxbridge, LSE, UCL and Imperial. Durham still places well in most subjects tho with a long history of success so I'd definitely say Durham is more prestigious than Leeds. This is not to say it's better at every subject, prestige is more about history and elitism which Durham is fairly good at 😅