Newspaper league tables are questionable — so I made my own
Just slapping this list here if anyone finds it useful or interesting. I always wondered how accurate uni league tables were. So I made my own. Which is obviously stupidly inaccurate if you value different things to me. (I’d love to hear if you do).
Here’s what I put into a spreadsheet for 40 universities (which I chose based on their overall rankings in the main newspapers).
Challenged to achieve best work (4%)Intellectually stimulating (5%)Knowledge & skills for the future (10%)Good balance of directed and independent study (3%)Quality of teaching (explaining things)(10%)Academic reputation (6%)Entry Standards score (10%)REF proportion of 4* research (10%)Student to Staff Ratio (6%)HESA continuation difference from benchmark * 10 (6%)Career (8%)Citations per faculty (4%)Mental well-being (2%)Degree outcomes (5%)Satisfied with feedback (guardian)(5%)On Track rating (6%)All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.
The results were as follows:
Top 10: Imperial(1st), Oxford(2nd), Cambridge(3rd), UCL(4th), LSE(5th), Bristol(6th), Warwick(7th), St. Andrews(8th), Manchester(9th), Edinburgh(10th).
Top 20: Durham(11th), KCL(12th), Bath (13th), Birmingham (14th), Lancaster (15th), Southampton (16th), Glasgow (17th), Leeds (18th), Sheffield (19th), Nottingham (20th).
Top 30: Exeter (21st), York (22nd), Queen Mary (23rd), Loughborough (24th), Queen’s Belfast (25th), UEA (26th), Cardiff (27th), Surrey (28th), Liverpool (29th), Newcastle (30th).
Top 40: Reading (31st), Sussex (32nd), Kent (33rd), Strathclyde (34th), Leicester (35th), Aberdeen (36th), Royal Holloway (37th), City (38th), Dundee (39th), Heriot Watt (40th).
What surprised me:
UCL scoring higher than LSE
St. Andrews at 8th instead of top 3
Manchester at 9th — always thought it was a midtier uni
Same with Birmingham at 14.
Was shocked by Exeter at 21st, always thought of it as posh and semi-prestigious. Guess it’s all a marketing gimmick.
Anyway
Share ur thoughts & how you would’ve weighted it
Here’s what I put into a spreadsheet for 40 universities (which I chose based on their overall rankings in the main newspapers).
Challenged to achieve best work (4%)Intellectually stimulating (5%)Knowledge & skills for the future (10%)Good balance of directed and independent study (3%)Quality of teaching (explaining things)(10%)Academic reputation (6%)Entry Standards score (10%)REF proportion of 4* research (10%)Student to Staff Ratio (6%)HESA continuation difference from benchmark * 10 (6%)Career (8%)Citations per faculty (4%)Mental well-being (2%)Degree outcomes (5%)Satisfied with feedback (guardian)(5%)On Track rating (6%)All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.
The results were as follows:
Top 10: Imperial(1st), Oxford(2nd), Cambridge(3rd), UCL(4th), LSE(5th), Bristol(6th), Warwick(7th), St. Andrews(8th), Manchester(9th), Edinburgh(10th).
Top 20: Durham(11th), KCL(12th), Bath (13th), Birmingham (14th), Lancaster (15th), Southampton (16th), Glasgow (17th), Leeds (18th), Sheffield (19th), Nottingham (20th).
Top 30: Exeter (21st), York (22nd), Queen Mary (23rd), Loughborough (24th), Queen’s Belfast (25th), UEA (26th), Cardiff (27th), Surrey (28th), Liverpool (29th), Newcastle (30th).
Top 40: Reading (31st), Sussex (32nd), Kent (33rd), Strathclyde (34th), Leicester (35th), Aberdeen (36th), Royal Holloway (37th), City (38th), Dundee (39th), Heriot Watt (40th).
What surprised me:
UCL scoring higher than LSE
St. Andrews at 8th instead of top 3
Manchester at 9th — always thought it was a midtier uni
Same with Birmingham at 14.
Was shocked by Exeter at 21st, always thought of it as posh and semi-prestigious. Guess it’s all a marketing gimmick.
Anyway
Share ur thoughts & how you would’ve weighted it
(edited 11 months ago)
Original post by tommo15
Just slapping this list here if anyone finds it useful or interesting. I always wondered how accurate uni league tables were. So I made my own. Which is obviously stupidly inaccurate if you value different things to me. (I’d love to hear if you do).
Here’s what I put into a spreadsheet for 40 universities (which I chose based on their overall rankings in the main newspapers).
Challenged to achieve best work (4%)Intellectually stimulating (5%)Knowledge & skills for the future (10%)Good balance of directed and independent study (3%)Quality of teaching (explaining things)(10%)Academic reputation (6%)Entry Standards score (10%)REF proportion of 4* research (10%)Student to Staff Ratio (6%)HESA continuation difference from benchmark * 10 (6%)Career (8%)Citations per faculty (4%)Mental well-being (2%)Degree outcomes (5%)Satisfied with feedback (guardian)(5%)On Track rating (6%)All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.
The results were as follows:
Top 10: Imperial(1st), Oxford(2nd), Cambridge(3rd), UCL(4th), LSE(5th), Bristol(6th), Warwick(7th), St. Andrews(8th), Manchester(9th), Edinburgh(10th).
Top 20: Durham(11th), KCL(12th), Bath (13th), Birmingham (14th), Lancaster (15th), Southampton (16th), Glasgow (17th), Leeds (18th), Sheffield (19th), Nottingham (20th).
Top 30: Exeter (21st), York (22nd), Queen Mary (23rd), Loughborough (24th), Queen’s Belfast (25th), UEA (26th), Cardiff (27th), Surrey (28th), Liverpool (29th), Newcastle (30th).
Top 40: Reading (31st), Sussex (32nd), Kent (33rd), Strathclyde (34th), Leicester (35th), Aberdeen (36th), Royal Holloway (37th), City (38th), Dundee (39th), Heriot Watt (40th).
What surprised me:
UCL scoring higher than LSE
St. Andrews at 8th instead of top 3
Manchester at 9th — always thought it was a midtier uni
Same with Birmingham at 14.
Was shocked by Exeter at 21st, always thought of it as posh and semi-prestigious. Guess it’s all a marketing gimmick.
Anyway
Share ur thoughts & how you would’ve weighted it
Here’s what I put into a spreadsheet for 40 universities (which I chose based on their overall rankings in the main newspapers).
Challenged to achieve best work (4%)Intellectually stimulating (5%)Knowledge & skills for the future (10%)Good balance of directed and independent study (3%)Quality of teaching (explaining things)(10%)Academic reputation (6%)Entry Standards score (10%)REF proportion of 4* research (10%)Student to Staff Ratio (6%)HESA continuation difference from benchmark * 10 (6%)Career (8%)Citations per faculty (4%)Mental well-being (2%)Degree outcomes (5%)Satisfied with feedback (guardian)(5%)On Track rating (6%)All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.
The results were as follows:
Top 10: Imperial(1st), Oxford(2nd), Cambridge(3rd), UCL(4th), LSE(5th), Bristol(6th), Warwick(7th), St. Andrews(8th), Manchester(9th), Edinburgh(10th).
Top 20: Durham(11th), KCL(12th), Bath (13th), Birmingham (14th), Lancaster (15th), Southampton (16th), Glasgow (17th), Leeds (18th), Sheffield (19th), Nottingham (20th).
Top 30: Exeter (21st), York (22nd), Queen Mary (23rd), Loughborough (24th), Queen’s Belfast (25th), UEA (26th), Cardiff (27th), Surrey (28th), Liverpool (29th), Newcastle (30th).
Top 40: Reading (31st), Sussex (32nd), Kent (33rd), Strathclyde (34th), Leicester (35th), Aberdeen (36th), Royal Holloway (37th), City (38th), Dundee (39th), Heriot Watt (40th).
What surprised me:
UCL scoring higher than LSE
St. Andrews at 8th instead of top 3
Manchester at 9th — always thought it was a midtier uni
Same with Birmingham at 14.
Was shocked by Exeter at 21st, always thought of it as posh and semi-prestigious. Guess it’s all a marketing gimmick.
Anyway
Share ur thoughts & how you would’ve weighted it
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Reply 2
Original post by BenRyan99
I've long said that the newspaper and CUG rankings are terrible, so glad to see you make an alternative set of rankings. The rankings pass the sniff test which is good to see (no universities in wildly incorrect positions).
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
"Wildly incorrect" - so in other words - matches your own viewpoint?
Going into tables with a "sniff test" means that no uni can ever get better or worse because people just reject a league table because it doesn't match what they think, even if that uni genuinely has got better/worse.
Original post by Uni_student3132
"Wildly incorrect" - so in other words - matches your own viewpoint?
Going into tables with a "sniff test" means that no uni can ever get better or worse because people just reject a league table because it doesn't match what they think, even if that uni genuinely has got better/worse.
Going into tables with a "sniff test" means that no uni can ever get better or worse because people just reject a league table because it doesn't match what they think, even if that uni genuinely has got better/worse.
Now what's been given here is overall rankings of course, but I think it's fair to say one would be suspicious of a methodology that created results completely at odds with conventional wisdom. That these rankings don't have anything completely wild and the measures used in the methodology seem okay, is good, not bias. How else would one come to a quick first judgement of whether the results are plausible without using conventional wisdom?
(edited 11 months ago)
I think the methodology here is sounder than 99% of "here's my uni rankings" threads.
Agree with BenRyan99, (as usual
), that some of the criteria are inherently a bit more wooly than others, but at least we're spread over a wide variety of measures rather than somones impression of prestige or thoughts that the campus was dirty on an open day.
Agree with BenRyan99, (as usual
), that some of the criteria are inherently a bit more wooly than others, but at least we're spread over a wide variety of measures rather than somones impression of prestige or thoughts that the campus was dirty on an open day.Reply 5
“All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.”
Which of those included the REF data?
Which “Career” metric did you use?
How did you adjust for subject mix impact on the citations data?
How did you adjust for age/size impact on “academic reputation”?
How did you adjust for universities excluded from the QS rankings or other missing data points - like the NSS gaps for oxbridge?
Did you use mean score or percent agree metrics for the NSS? The guardian ranks using means score (as it’s more varied) but publish % agree in their spreadsheets.
Which of those included the REF data?
Which “Career” metric did you use?
How did you adjust for subject mix impact on the citations data?
How did you adjust for age/size impact on “academic reputation”?
How did you adjust for universities excluded from the QS rankings or other missing data points - like the NSS gaps for oxbridge?
Did you use mean score or percent agree metrics for the NSS? The guardian ranks using means score (as it’s more varied) but publish % agree in their spreadsheets.
(edited 11 months ago)
Reply 6
Also fwiw - many of your metrics have a skew towards any universities with a med school - which explains many of the things that surprised you.
Original post by PQ
“All data is sourced from NSS, QS, UCAS or HESA.”
Which of those included the REF data?
Which “Career” metric did you use?
How did you adjust for subject mix impact on the citations data?
How did you adjust for age/size impact on “academic reputation”?
How did you adjust for universities excluded from the QS rankings or other missing data points - like the NSS gaps for oxbridge?
Did you use mean score or percent agree metrics for the NSS? The guardian ranks using means score (as it’s more varied) but publish % agree in their spreadsheets.
Which of those included the REF data?
Which “Career” metric did you use?
How did you adjust for subject mix impact on the citations data?
How did you adjust for age/size impact on “academic reputation”?
How did you adjust for universities excluded from the QS rankings or other missing data points - like the NSS gaps for oxbridge?
Did you use mean score or percent agree metrics for the NSS? The guardian ranks using means score (as it’s more varied) but publish % agree in their spreadsheets.
The REF data was published separately as part of the REF review every 4 or so years.
NSS gaps for Oxbridge were the most difficult part — i used data from specific the few specific subjects which did have enough respondents. For Oxford, these included a healthy range of subjects whereas Cambridge only had data for medicine (deffo a skew there).
I used the mean across all respondents for each uni (except where this was not provided in the NSS data, in which case I added up the numbers by subject).
All of these 40 unis were ranked by QS.
I didn’t adjust for age or size for QS reputation. There obviously have an impact, but I don’t think that the public / employer / students particularly cares about it. Age and prestige are largely synonymous unfortunately.
Original post by BenRyan99
I've long said that the newspaper and CUG rankings are terrible, so glad to see you make an alternative set of rankings. The rankings pass the sniff test which is good to see (no universities in wildly incorrect positions).
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Mental well-being was one I took in and out of my rankings and fiddled a lot with in terms of its weighting. It’s plucked from the new NSS questions about the AVAILABILITY of mental health support, so in other words is a poor measure of how depressed students are. Nonetheless I decided it was likely indicative of the culture of the university— Edinburgh & UCL both had scores that matched my (obviously subjective) experiences there.
Original post by BenRyan99
I've long said that the newspaper and CUG rankings are terrible, so glad to see you make an alternative set of rankings. The rankings pass the sniff test which is good to see (no universities in wildly incorrect positions).
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Would be interested to see the precise definitions for career, degree outcomes, and mental well-being. These are often some of the more dubious metrics on rankings, which can give misleading results.
Reply 11
The 2015 paper by Professor Vikki Boliver of Durham University is still the definitive work in this area, which puts all the league tables into perspective. I have cited it several times on this website but it is worth drawing attention to its conclusions yet again.
There are essentially four clusters of universities in the UK with very little to choose, in terms of status, between institutions falling into each cluster (though there may have been limited movement between the clusters in recent times).
Are there distinctive clusters of higher and lower status universities in the UK?
https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1082905
The first and only truly élite tier is Oxford and Cambridge, principally resulting from their vastly superior financial resources.
"...it is Oxford and Cambridge that stand out among the Old universities as forming an ‘elite’ tier of universities. Again the differences between this ‘elite’ tier and the rest are substantial in relation to research activity, economic resources, academic selectivity and social mix, but are much more modest in relation to teaching quality. Notably, the remaining 22 Russell Group universities are found to cluster together with over half (17 out of 30) of all the other Old universities, and thus cannot be said to constitute a distinctive elite group. These findings are consistent with research predating the formation of the Russell Group, discussed earlier, which found that Oxford and Cambridge stood out from the rest but that the majority of the Russell Group universities clustered together with the majority of other Old universities as middle tier institutions ton & Makepeace, Citation1982; King, Citation1970; Tight, Citation1988).
Beyond this, most of the league tables are merely marketing ploys or attempts to measure the unmeasurable.
There are essentially four clusters of universities in the UK with very little to choose, in terms of status, between institutions falling into each cluster (though there may have been limited movement between the clusters in recent times).
Are there distinctive clusters of higher and lower status universities in the UK?
https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1082905
The first and only truly élite tier is Oxford and Cambridge, principally resulting from their vastly superior financial resources.
"...it is Oxford and Cambridge that stand out among the Old universities as forming an ‘elite’ tier of universities. Again the differences between this ‘elite’ tier and the rest are substantial in relation to research activity, economic resources, academic selectivity and social mix, but are much more modest in relation to teaching quality. Notably, the remaining 22 Russell Group universities are found to cluster together with over half (17 out of 30) of all the other Old universities, and thus cannot be said to constitute a distinctive elite group. These findings are consistent with research predating the formation of the Russell Group, discussed earlier, which found that Oxford and Cambridge stood out from the rest but that the majority of the Russell Group universities clustered together with the majority of other Old universities as middle tier institutions ton & Makepeace, Citation1982; King, Citation1970; Tight, Citation1988).
Beyond this, most of the league tables are merely marketing ploys or attempts to measure the unmeasurable.
(edited 11 months ago)
Quick Reply
Related discussions
- Should the Russell Group break into two tiers?
- Do Russel groups matter ?
- Manchester vs Bristol
- Advice please, Cambridge law offer but insurance choice
- Bristol Law Not Put On Hold
- What do people think about Heriot Watt University?
- Need help choosing which uni offer to accept
- Application advice! US (American) to UK - Junior Year - Aerospace Engineering
- Masters, budget cuts, uni rank
- Complete University Guide Table 2024
- Is Loughborough actually good for politics?Why does it have lower entry requirements?
- Have I made the wrong choice for firm/insurance?
- Wish I ended up somewhere better than King's.
- Choosing between two universities
- Where should I firm for Engineering
- is kent really a bad university?
- For those applying for Graphic Design, Illustration, Vis Com courses
- AAB universities?
- is kcl good?
- University
Latest
Trending
Last reply 1 day ago
Sign this petition to scrap 2025 gcses - legit govt petition sign plsLast reply 1 day ago
Please be aware of my qualification message about " shelf-life "Last reply 5 days ago
Which one is better?University of Manchester or University of WarwickLast reply 1 week ago
Should we stop fining parents for taking children on holiday during term time?Posted 1 month ago
Why is queen mary university of london censoring a visa scandal?
