Warwick VS St Andrews

I received physics offer from both uni.
Which one is better?

I don’t really care about the cost, environments and 4-years course.

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by swing0322

I received physics offer from both uni.
Which one is better?

I don’t really care about the cost, environments and 4-years course.

You've said what you don't care about. What do you care about? What does the word "better" mean to you?

Reply 2

Midgetgem84

St andrews!

Reply 3

swing0322

Original post by DataVenia

You've said what you don't care about. What do you care about? What does the word "better" mean to you?

As an international student, I don’t have much insight into the field, so I’m looking for some guidance. I just want to take a serious look at my options before making a final decision🫠🫠
Cost and location aren’t major concerns for me; I’m more about the global reputation, rankings, and people’s perception in the world as well as in the Uk. I’m also open to changing my major after graduation or potentially entering the workforce. So any insights on job prospects and further education opportunities would be great!
Plus, I’m planning to do a master’s after undergrad, so any advice would be super appreciated!

Reply 4

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by swing0322

A reasonable indicator of "global reputation" and "people’s perception in the world" would be the Academic Reputation and Employer Reputation measures gather by Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS) each year. These measures are established via surveys which are sent to thousands of global academics and employers, where the results measure the reputation of institutions and their programmes in the eyes of fellow academics and those involved in hiring graduates. You can find more about these surveys here, but essentially respondents are asked to nominate institutions that demonstrate academic excellence (Academic Reputation Survey) or that they would choose to recruit from (Employer Reputation Survey).

Rather than looking at these universities as a whole, we can look at them from a Physics perspective (well, Physics & Astronomy, which is most fine-grained category available). See the results for all UK universities here. Employer Reputation is on Employability tab with Academic Reputation of the Research & Discovery tab.

Employer Reputation
University of Warwick: 72.3
University of St Andrews: 64.3

Academic Reputation
University of Warwick: 62.5
University of St Andrews: 63.9

You've also asked about rankings generally. The problem with rankings is that different rankings use different measures and weight those measures differently. These can and do lead to different results between the rankings. So take care not to focus on the "headline" rank, but to look at the individual measures used, as one university may have moved above another based upon a measure which is irrelevant to you. They can also move around each year, and significant ranking differences can be the result of very small differences in their score. Having said that:

QS World University Rankings (for Physics & Astronomy) - source
University of Warwick: 151-200 globally, 16th in the UK
University of St Andrews: 151-200 globally, 19th in the UK

Complete University Guide (for Physics & Astronomy) - source
University of Warwick: 93.2 - 10th in the UK (the same as last year)
University of St Andrews: 93.1 - 11th in the UK (but last year was 9th, just above Warwick)

The Guardian University Guide (for Physics) - source
University of Warwick: 70.9 - 9th in UK
University of St Andrews: 82.3 - 5th in UK

As I'm sure you can tell, there isn't a lot to choose between the Physics provision at these two universities. If pushed, you'd probably say that Warwick just edges it - for "global reputation, rankings, and people’s perception in the world as well as in the Uk".