The bumper thread of University League Tables discussion - includes an info post

Interesting insight. Could you elaborate on King's? It seems to be all over the place with some ranking it in the top 7-8 and others outside the top 20 yet still outranking many universities in terms of "prestige"? You also didn't mention LSE here though you said in a previous post it's reputation has changed significantly.

Maybe, but I got into Edinburgh too, and liked it a lot till I looked round and saw it isn't all it's cracked up to be. I suspect you go, or want to go to Edinburgh (Y)

X

One day LSE was producing people intent on destroying western society; the next it was producing the bankers who nearly did.

QS and other international rankings heavily rely on 'reputation' rankings which is bull****. Maybe factor in the Leiden ranking (citations and impact)?

Kent kinda sucks, Oxford and Cambridge sound great, but aren't actually that exciting when you really look at them (dry as dust), and Bath had such a slow admissions team this year, it took them 2 months just to check that they accepted my qualification!! lol

Now Sussex...

EDIT: What do people think about more subject specific rankings like mba? I might include them but with only half the rating of a non- subject specific table.

OK here goes again for 'overlord rankings' MKVI. I've taken into account the CWTS Leiden research rankings now as well. The new table still has a 50:50 domestic: international weighting.

1) Cambridge (100%)
2) Oxford (98%)
3) ICL (85%)
4) UCL (84%)
5) LSE (70%)
6) Durham (68%)
=6) S.t Andrews (68%)
8) Warwick (64%)
9) Bristol (61%)
10) Edinburgh (58%)

Honorable mentions of: York, Glasgow, Exeter, KCL, Nottingham and Bath with >40%

Those leiden rankings actually made quite a bit of a difference:

ICL overtook UCL again. But these two have always been in 3rd or 4th place.
S.t Andrews moved up from joint 7th place to joint 6th place.*
Manchester, Southampton and Sheffield left the honorable mentions, and were joined instead by Exeter.

*Note: By the old measure technically Durham lied above S.t Andrews numerically. But I have decided to change the level of precision from 3sf to 2sf because 3sf is an inappropriate level of accuracy imo, and that any university within 1% of another earns a joint place with that university.

Hmm. I can't help feeling not too many people are going to be all that happy with this. Still, what do you people think?

EDIT: What do people think about more subject specific rankings like mba? I might include them but with only half the rating of a non- subject specific table.

The methodology on QS looks pretty good to me. I see nothing wrong with using the opinions of people that have worked a long time with universities. In any case its only 40% of QS, and for my league table it turns out to only form 5% of the overall ranking. Nevertheless Leiden is actually not in my rankings. That will be rectified, and I will release MKVI when its done.

Order them in terms of which one you think it better, with the first on the list being the 'best' in your opinion I'm just curious to see what people think.

The methodology on QS looks pretty good to me. I see nothing wrong with using the opinions of people that have worked a long time with universities. In any case its only 40% of QS, and for my league table it turns out to only form 5% of the overall ranking.

There's a hell of a lot wrong with making academics who by definition are experts in their field of study, not experts on the performance of a couple of hundred universities around the world, rank them. To assume that they have a sound knowledge of what hundreds of universities are doing and how they are performing, even in their field of study, is illusionary.

Go to a random biologist at Oxford, he will have pretty perfect knowledge of his own department and standing, some knowledge of what's going on in the universities he's closely collaborating with and will know close to nothing about universities in Germany, or Italy, or the US. It's all hearsay.

Go to a random biologist at Oxford, he will have pretty perfect knowledge of his own department and standing, some knowledge of what's going on in the universities he's closely collaborating with and will know close to nothing about universities in Germany, or Italy, or the US. It's all hearsay.

Likewise, much history doesn't travel. Those working on the history of Birmingham, won't know who are the best historians of Barcelona or Liege. Researchers on the English Civil War will have no knowledge on where the best work is being done on the Catalan Revolt even though they were happening simultaneously.

Again, similarly, that's just not really how the world works in my experience. Obviously, an historian knows his particular field best, but again, through journals and conferences, will tend to have a pretty good idea - or at least a strong opinion - as to the best departments internationally.

You grab hold of a British historian by the throat and ask him whether the University of California at Davis, the University of Paris IX, the Comenius University of Bratislava or the University of Mumbai has the better history department. And are any of them better or worse than Southampton?