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Is Bristol the most prestigious Uni after Oxbridge/London?

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Reply 20

frenzied

Original post by therealOG

At the end of the day, unless you want a high flying career in Law, investment banking or consultancy, a Bristol graduate will be equally employable as graduates from the aforementioned uni's, including Oxbridge.

Disagree with this. Getting to the top is based upon merit and ability, not where you went to university. There is nothing to stop any individual from a good university getting in such positions. Getting in at the bottom in the first place is where the problem is.

^ Precisely.

(edited 12 years ago)

University of Bristol

Bristol

Reply 21

sango

Original post by violenti

Where do you put Bristol in that mix. The large employers with signficant university marketing spend , tend not to recruit heavily(overall ) from St Andrews, and to a lesser extent Warwick expect for maths and economics graduates.York and Warwick are without doubt sound Universities, but sad as it is the larger employers still see them as NEW Universities, as opposed to ancient ones in which the category below are. The large law firms, management consultancies, investment banks, barristers chambers tend to recruit and focus their time in the following Universities in the main. In no particular order:

LSE
UCL
Imperial
Kings
Oxford
Cambridge
Bristol
Durham
Manchester

FYI.

http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMReport11.pdf

Scroll down to page 26 and in the future get your facts right.

Reply 22

georgeflynn

Original post by Phil1541

Bristol is definitely top 10 material, purely from an employers perspective Bristol one of the best in the UK.

It doesn't do to well in the rankings due to student satisfaction ratings in the social sciences/Humanities (not enough contact hours) bringing there ranking down.

If you look at the criteria for most league tables you will notice there is little difference between the research quality, amount of good honours, UCAS points on entry and employer prospects between the likes of: Bristol, Durham, UCL etc...
(a lot of it becomes subject dependant as on a whole university scale there is little to differentiate between)

Bristol used to be seen as 2nd to Oxbridge around 30-50 years ago when it was in its prime, it has declined since then in terms of ranking but the employers links still stand.

Original post by violenti

I was on about Employer league tables, not news paper ones. However the world employer tables which are more factual put Bristol in the top 15, and it therefore follows surely it is according to a recent survey in the top four!?

at the end of the day it really doesnt matter you know
there are loads of good universities, from your Oxfords, Leeds, Lancaster you know all these places are good
it doesnt really matter where you go (providing it has a semi good reputation)
obviously if you go to somewhere like which has Met at the end it might be a bit...
but a degree from Bristol is just as good as a degree from KCL or Leeds or whatever they all sound the same to me i dont really over analyse
it probably does go down well with employers, like manchester, i was just referring to the hostile university league tables which show little movement

Reply 23

Phil1541

Original post by sango

FYI.

http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMReport11.pdf

Scroll down to page 26 and in the future get your facts right.

That was a pretty good read, cheers for posting that up.

Seems work experience is more key now than ever when it comes to securing a graduate job.

Thankfully my degree has a placement year :cool:

Reply 24

legal_beagle

For what it's worth, Bristol is one of the five or so universities explicitly targeted by the top three strategy consultancy firms (Bain, BCG, McKinsey).

As a UCL graduate who has been very successful in getting job offers, my experience of the recruitment market is that employers view the top 10-15 unis in the following way:

Oxbridge
The rest.

There are gradients and differences between them, but they vary too much from employer to employer to make much of a difference. Far more important is the quality of the candidate - a First from any top university or a 2.1 from Oxbridge is enough to get your foot in the door and be taken seriously, and from that point on the quality of the individual candidate takes centre stage.

Of course, I'm only really talking about the (academically) 'top' grads here. I suspect arbitrary assumptions about the university's 'prestige' matters more if you've got a 2.1.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 25

dulcificum

In no way - not even close.

Reply 26

dulcificum

UCL
LSE
Imperial
Durham
Manchester
St Andrews
Warwick
Lancaster
Edinburgh
York
SOAS for the obvious.
Sussex for lots of subjects.
Even Bath is probably better now.

Definitely nowhere near third.

Reply 27

dulcificum

Original post by microfatcat

I think the difference between the top 20 is negligible, surely?

Most quantitative analyses say otherwise.

Reply 28

TurboCretin

Original post by sango

FYI.

http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMReport11.pdf

Scroll down to page 26 and in the future get your facts right.

Very useful document, thanks!

I'd be willing to bet that Warwick's place among the upper echelons of employer uptake is down to the insane rep of their maths/business departments, and the ties they have with the world of commerce.

Reply 29

brownbear88

If you're just looking at prestige, you might be interested to look at the Times Higher Education world university rankings according to prestige, which arguably measures a similar sort of thing. Bristol features pretty highly, in the 81-90 bracket.

Reply 30

De Lubac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJY73GgkvWg

Reply 31

TurboCretin

I think it depends on what you mean by prestige. Do you care about the rep as it lies with employers, or academics? I think Bristol does better with the former than the latter at this point in time. As someone has mentioned, Bristol and Durham used to be among the best after Oxbridge. In the mean time, both have slid in the eyes of academics. However, the prestige employers attach to universities is slow moving by comparison; remember, these people probably haven't looked at a league table since they graduated themselves.

The picture is not always as simple as it first appears though. City law firms, for example, employ more from London than from Bristol. That is fact. However, London colleges generally award 2-3 times as many 1st class honours degrees in law than Bristol do. Is this a relevant factor? Probably.

Reply 32

dancingrobots

It depends what subject you are doing really and what job you want to go into. For instance, my university - Hertfordshire - is probabaly the best in the world if you want to go into Formula One - there are companies who work for the sport that solely employ Hertfordshire graduates, and it has the more grads in the sport than any other uni world wide. If you want to work for a supercar company, Stuttgart is where they like to look for their workers. Rolls Royce like Loughborough grads (sorry for the Engineering bias).

Obviously, the employability from the big universities is going to be very good because they have had the time to establish themselves and firmly establish themselves a good reputation in the various industries. Outside of Oxbridge, you've got Kings, Imperial, UCL, St Andrews, Durham, Warwick as the main ones, but some smaller universities like Surrey actually have a better record for employability and employer recognition than the big universities.
Bristol is a good university though, although I wouldn't say it was the best after Oxbrige in general terms, but still an excellent university. Bath is also supposed to be quite good too :smile:

Reply 33

ChessMister

New College of Humanities
Oxbridge
Bristol

In order of prestige

Reply 34

De Lubac

Original post by ChessMister

New College of Humanities
Oxbridge
Bristol

In order of prestige

^ Trolling?

Reply 35

treyno

From an employment perspective, ask any 40-60 year old (future employer) and they will say that Durham, LSE, UCL and Edinburgh are the alternative- as they have been from since these future employers were students.

Reply 36

ChessMister

Original post by De Lubac

^ Trolling?

This is my serious face- :bandit:

Reply 37

derp

Original post by violenti

Which ones in your opinion are more prestigious overall outside Oxbridge and London so far as employers are concerned?

I am amused about why you care what I think, being neither anyone important to you or an employer! But okay, from my layperson's perspective I would say that Bristol is there with Durham, Warwick, Nottingham, York, Edinburgh, Bath.