University Guide

It can be hard to choose the right university to go for so this guide is set up to help you decide. Although choosing universities because of their specialist subject matter and talent of the teachers is important if you believe two colleges are similar then other factors may influence your choice.

University League Tables 2017

The Times Newspaper undertakes a lot of research into the UK universities each year and produced the Good University Guide. Unfortunately, the data now resides behind a paywall, so we've collated data from other specialised resources.

All league tables follow a similar format and are the results from asking actual students that attend the universities their satisfaction with various aspects of their studies. The areas covered include:

Overall student satisfaction with the university.
Research quality from the Research Excellent Framework.
Student to staff ratio calculated from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data.
Services, academic, and facilities spend per student.
UCAS entry standards.
The percentage of graduates achieving a first or 2.1 class honours degree.
Graduate prospects in obtaining relevant careers.

Complete University Guide League Tables

From the information above, each university is given an overall score out of 1,000 that produces the following league table. We've taken the top 20 universities in the UK with the score shown against each college.

Overall Rank	University Name	Rating
1	Cambridge University	1,000
2	Oxford University	998
3	St.Andrews	962
4	London School of Economics	952
5	Imperial College London	925

See the full listings at the Complete University Guide here.

Time Higher Education Rankings

UK Rank	World Rank	University Name	Students	Score Rating
1	1	University of Oxford	19,718	95.0%
2	4	University of Cambridge	18,605	93.6%
3	8	Imperial College London	15,236	90.0%
4	15	University College London	28,602	86.5%
5	25	London School of Economics	9,401	80.2%

See all global universities included in these rankings here.

WhatUni Student Choice Awards

WhatUni also has rankings based upon reviews from actual students. Below are the top five ratings from their 2017 research. Rating points are out of 5.

Overall Rank	University Name	Rating	Job Prospects	Courses
1	Harper Adams University	4.73	4.79	4.56
2	Loughborough University	4.61	4.46	4.20
3	Bangor University	4.59	4.30	4.45
4	Swansea University	4.58	4.28	4.39
5	Edge Hill University	4.57	4.27	4.39

See the full WhatUni list for 2017 here.

Harper Adams University

This university has won the coveted title for many years, so what makes it so great?

The support, social life and quality of the teaching staff are top of the reasons why students rave about it so much.

The single campus site supports degrees in the agri-food chain and rural sector and has its own commercial farm.