Russell Group = Ivy League? What a joke.

If you want to know more information about graduate destinations you can get much more useful information than I can. Contact the admissions tutors for your potential/current departments and ask for the anonymised first destinations survey including job titles and employers - that way for your course you can get a list showing exactly what jobs graduates are doing for which companies...very interesting reading (Soton actually suffers in the grad destinations scores because our graduates seem to go off travelling instead of getting a job).

My personal favourite measure of quality? Research Intensity (basically Research Grant/(Research Grant + Teaching Grant)).

By this measure the most elite universities (apart from non-teaching/non-HEFCE funded institutions like the Institute of Cancer Research) are Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Imperial *and* UCL - all a long way away from the rest of the bunch (Oxford is 47%, UCL has an RI of 44%, the next highest is York with 34% - a big gap).

Of course if you use research income (the most common measure for postgrad "quality" and not one I like) then LSE comes a lowly 26th - well below my beloved Soton at 9th (11th in research intensity).

Ideally if you wanted to measure intensity AND volume you'd have to combine these two seperate measures - by which Soton comes 6th and LSE 13th

Imperial's old students are not going to be prime ministers, they're scientists, former students include Sir Alexander Fleming, Sir Andrew Huxely and HG Wells (And Brian May ). There are quite a few nobel laureates. Former students are not going to be in the lime light as much.

Perhaps I'm biased, but these people to me are more distinguished, I consider the work they do far more challenging and beneficial to society.

I don't blame them! I'm not taking a gap year and I'm really tempted by a year out. Perhaps I'll deviate and then go work in a random beach restaurant in thailand eventually...or not.

But thank you Pencil Queen, Will do.

Pencil Queen is a very naive number cruncher-first destinations are a very crude index of graduate employment-precisely because they are so short-term, many students simply do not stay in touch, or they become postgrads, or they take time out. First destinations cannot be used to make fine distinctions about employability. You might be better off going to the other extreme by making a statistical analysis, on a per capita basis, of each university's entries in Who's Who. Even there, however there will be considerable inaccuracy (not everybody fills in the form properly and the term 'London University' could cover a range of big colleges)...

I love your acts of defiance PQ. First, "LOSER" and now "I'm a very naive number cruncher"!

Are you better than Stephen Hawkin at maths, just out of interest

Cheeky bugger

I just find it funny when people insult me - ever since some newbie asked me cautiously if I was aware that it said "Dumbass" under my name (I recieved neg rep with the comment "Dumbass").

I thought this one deserved a credit though - hence the crunched together words (who'd have thunk it I'm a word cruncher too!) and the WAS at the end....

Entries into Who's Who?! What a ridiculous way of rating a university - the destinations statistic is very useful for perspective undergraduates and though, as you say, it cannot be taken entirely as read it is certainly better than your suggestion.