Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Subject-Specific Rankings vs Overall Rankings

My teacher advised me to base my Uni opinions on three factors: Employability, Ranking and Personal Feeling. Regarding the second one, the ranking- when picking firm choice- which should I look at: The Topic-Specific, or the general ones?
I know that the "general" measure prestige (and so employability); but then, not every Uni has strenghts in all of departments.
What to trust?
Also, which ranking board do you consider as "most accurate"?

Reply 1

Chlorophile

Original post by Citipati

Personally, I think personal feeling is by far the most important out of those factors. You can get a general kind of impression of how 'good' a university is from league tables but they really only give you a ballpark estimate - international league tables focus more on prestige, international reputation and research whereas domestic league tables seem to focus more on student satisfaction and employability. I used league tables to outline the kind of universities I wanted to apply to (i.e. those that are generally near the top) and then used personal preference and the courses offered to narrow them down.