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Do employers care about University rankings?

I would think that as long as you have a degree, it wouldn't matter the rank of your university. But would your employer take it into account if your uni was say 80th? Obviously if it was from Oxbridge or the top 5 then its impressive, but what about the rest?

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Original post by A Mysterious Lord

Agreed.

Reply 3

Andy_J

Depends on the course, but the grade is much more important.

I'm doing pharmacy and employers don't care because the course is standardised by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society so no matter where you go, you do the same course.

History at Oxford compared to Liverpool Hope however, they will more than likely pick the Oxford graduate.

Reply 4

Doglamlico

Original post by samegreeneyes

'Rank' doesn't matter that much. It's just prestige, basically.

If you're applying for the most competitive banking/legal training contracts, if you don't come from what they see as a top 20 uni, then you don't stand a chance in hell.

For most jobs, though, it doesn't matter. Get a 2.1 or a 1st from any respectable uni and you should find jobs. Obviously, the better the uni (to an extent, if the reputation is marginal no one will care) the higher employers will regard you before they interview you, but no sane employer is going to care if you got a 1st from Bristol instead of UCL, or Manchester instead of Liverpool.

Remember, in this day and age hundreds or even thousands of applicants will apply to each job, and companies don't interview them all. It's so easy for them to filter by university, class etc.

Reply 5

PrivateWealth

Original post by A Mysterious Lord

Wouldn't necessarily agree with that. If you want to work for a law firm, finance or any other high flying job, uni ranking makes a massive difference.

Reply 6

newts2k

Original post by samegreeneyes

a lot of them state top 20 but it depends, are you looking to go into something particular and where are you going?

Reply 7

crc290

Perhaps only in competitive fields such as law, but otherwise, I shouldn't think it matters a great deal

Reply 8

SpicyStrawberry

Original post by PrivateWealth

Wouldn't necessarily agree with that. If you want to work for a law firm, finance or any other high flying job, uni ranking makes a massive difference.

That's why the pie chart has a small red section; the amount of law and finance jobs that require you to attend a top university are very small compared to the total amount of jobs available.

Reply 9

nulli tertius

Original post by Aeschylus

I would hate for you to miss this.

Reply 10

poony

If you are not going for top jobs, any 2:1 or above at uni. within the top 100 should be fine.

If you cannot get into top 100, it generally means not good enough A level grades, I stressed in general, no need for people to tell me his/her exception stories.

This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Reply 11

Captain Hindsight

Generally what uni you go to doesn't matter but some companies don't interview unless you've been to a top 10 uni. Most don't mind what uni and are more interested in 2:1 etc but I'd be lying if I said every company doesn't judge you on your uni. My brother works at a selective company like this so he had told me this info.

Reply 12

Smack

Volunteer Team

My experience of two companies that I've worked at, one a Global 500 and the other FTSE 100, is that newspaper league tables don't matter because employers don't use them, so they won't know where your university is "ranked".

Thus, I don't care what a 17 year old hypothesises based on what he's read from another 17 year old.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 13

fluttershy

You have to consider too, when people say "some job's won't employ anyone from a University below the top 10", what top ten? There are various rankings which tend to differ due to what they look at and what weightings they give. Also, when? Rankings change year on year, is it the ranking when you applied, when you graduated, or does it have to be consistently top 10?

To be honest, when it comes to reputation, more important will be the reputation when the person making the decisions was at University (even more so if they went there), reputation in the industry (especially if the company has worked with the University) and reputation based on those coming for jobs. It's all going to be quite personal. A friend of mine works at a company that has a lot of Nottingham graduates, probably because the manager went to Nottingham. Another friend's boss went to Trent (back when it was a poly), and they have quite a high number of Trent graduates working for them.

Reply 14

stefl14

Trust me, university ranking does matter for a lot of jobs. It isn't a coincidence that the majority of the top jobs in society are held by Oxbridge graduates or at least graduates from very prestigious universities. Want to get into banking? - VERY difficult if you haven't gone to Oxbridge or LSE and to a lesser extent Warwick, UCL, Imperial, Durham etc. Same applies for law. It matters for other industries too - just not as much as some make out. I don't care what anyone says here employers don't see a first from Cambridge as equal to a first from Liverpool.

Reply 15

Alvin99

Original post by stefl14

How about uni of Bristol? Are it good enough?

Reply 16

TimmonaPortella

Original post by stefl14

Yep. Depends upon the career in discussion.

Original post by SpicyStrawberry

That's why the pie chart has a small red section; the amount of law and finance jobs that require you to attend a top university are very small compared to the total amount of jobs available.

The pie chart doesn't say that at all. The pie chart doesn't make much sense at all as a pie chart.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 17

Bobifier

It depends who the employer is. My dad has in the past been involved in selecting employees and he says that some interviewers selected based on university and some did not. Ultimately it's down to the luck of the draw - that is to say, which interviewer you get.

Reply 18

TimmonaPortella

Original post by Bobifier

Ultimately it's down to the luck of the draw - that is to say, which interviewer you get.

Not entirely. It still depends upon what you want to do. If you apply to a load of investment banks and happen not to get an interviewer who loves graduates from London Met, or one who doesn't care at all, you've not just been unlucky.

Reply 19

poohat

It depends on the field but yes it can matter and I get the impression its roughly/informally based on tiers; having a degree from Cambridge (or similar) is better than Manchester (or similar) which is better than East Anglia (or similar), but noone cares whether a university is ranked #8th or #11th, and its more based on long term prestige and reputation rather than newspaper league tables which fluctuate too much year on year. Realistically there are thousands of graduates produced each year and most of them look fairly identical from their CVs, so university quality is an obvious and easy way of doing a preliminary sort.