FIND THE PERFECT COURSE AND UNIVERSITY

if you care about university rankings

If you are looking to study different subjects and you do not know how to find the right course and university for you subject, looking into different rankings can be a great direction to go into. The worldly recognised university league tables are:

The Sunday Time*

The Complete University Guide

The Guardian Ranking

QS World University Rankings

Times Higher Education

Those are the most popular tables used in higher education worldwide. Unlike The Guardian, The Complete University Guide and The Times being the UK University league tables, Times Higher Education and QS are the world university league tables. In this particular guide, we are going to talk about the first three tables which rank UK Universities only.

What are the differences among the university league tables?

When you first look into choices of destinations to study, you might think university league tables are a good source of reference. Well, they are! However, there are not only one tables which causes enough confusion. They rank universities differently as well. Each league table is produced based on different measures and the way they take the measure into account and calculate the figures (scores) is also different.

All 3 university league tables are based on some of the same measures including student satisfaction (NSS), entry level, student staff ratio, services and facilities spend, and career prospect. However, the weight of those measures in the tables are different. If some of you are going to study Medicine, Pharmacy or Veterinary in particular, these subjects are measured and scored differently from all others because students graduating from these subjects have higher potential of being employed within 6 months after graduation (around 90% average at all universities).

The Guardian Rankings relies heavily on student experience and student satisfaction. 3 out of the 9 measures are student satisfaction of different components of the course. The figures are carried out based on the National Student Survey (NSS) every year at the end of the course or a module taught in the course. Depending on the university, the survey is competed by students in class publicly or online via the university’s email system. This also has a moderate impact on students’ answers which eventually affects the outcome of student satisfaction survey. The Guardian also introduced a new measure this year which is the continuation rate. This measure includes the students who continue to progress onto a higher education apart from those who go on to get a job within 6 months after graduation. This makes The Guardian is in a way biased by students’ subjective opinions. Also, the majority of the students who do the survey do not have the opportunity to experience other universities' teaching environment to form their judgement. The Complete University Guide is also similar to the Guardian rankings.

The Times's Good University Guide offers detailed information about its university league table. Apart from the common measures above, The Times takes teaching quality into account as an independent indicator. Good Honours is also one of the indicators utilised by The Times. Hence, the Research Quality indicator is weighted 1.5 whilst others are 1. This makes the outcome heavily rely on academic aspect of the universities. Also, all the indicators are calculated based on latest facts and figures through the NSS. Some of the indicators are impossible to be calculated due to particular subjects. Therefore, if you are looking to go into research direction, this league table is worth looking at.

These rankings are not only for universities but also for particular subjects. Even though a lot of universities offer the same or similar study subject at different levels, they do not offer the same teaching style, quality, course structure and the intensity. In fact, a higher ranked university offering the same course or subject as another lower ranked university can have lower ranking in a particular subject. So, if you want to study a specific subject, instead of looking at just general ranking of the university, looking at the ranking of that university within the subject is sometimes a better idea.

Guardian main table

The Guardian subject table

Those league tables offer you some sort of an idea about where is best to study in general. Even though they rank differently and you can see a university might be placed within the top 20 in The Guardian but not in the top 40 in The Times. This might confuse you a lot and you do not know which one to trust. Actually, for those universities outside top 10 in the UK in all the league tables, the slight difference in the rankings does not determine the quality of teaching, student experience and etc because only 0.5 point can make the ranking of a university go down 30 places.

The Complete University Guide table

The Guardian table

In conclusion, when looking at university rankings, you should bear in mind that a part from the top 10 universities rankings do not tell you the entire picture about a university. There are a lot more elements which should be co­­­­­nsidered as well, especially when you study a specific subject. If you prioritise student experience, The Guardian Rankings are worth looking at. If you prioritise research base learning, The Times league table is one of the references. You also have to pay subscription to have access to The Times League Table. Therefore, we recommend the best way is to contact UKEC team if you are interested in The Times rankings. We can provide any information you need regarding The Times rankings and specific subject league tables. So, if league tables are not everything when it comes to looking for the best university and course choice, what else is there?

Course details, taught modules, practicals and etc.

When it comes to looking for a specific course or study subject, the most important thing is to look at what that course offers. Although various universities offer the similar course or subject, what is taught within the course and how it is taught are different among the universities. You need to make sure you know what is the purpose of studying that course to produce the criteria of the course you are looking for. For example, if you are looking to study Business and Law which contains a lot of practical elements such as court practice, short work placements, field trips, you need to look for the course which offers particularly those elements.

Regarding the same subject or course name, some of the elements that differentiate from one university to another are the modules taught, the structure of the course, assessment methods, the practicality, research quality and the intensity. For example, for the similar subject which is Events Management, Manchester Metropolitan University offers two modules which are related to marketing and also compulsory modules, whilst at Coventry University Events Management students are taught mainly about event design and operations with an optional event marketing module. With the students who do not have a marketing background and want to go for event marketing, they might want to consider the course at MMU. However, with those who want to learn in-depth knowledge about event operation and design, they might prefer the course at Coventry University.

Where to find the details about course content and etc.

This information is available on the university's website. You can look for the course you want to study and find all information related to the modules, teaching method, assessments and so on. At first it can be very confusing and bombarding because of the amount of information you have to process and compare. This is the reason why you have to write down all the criteria you are looking for in a course. Also, remember to put all the criteria in an order of priority because there is nothing perfect so you might have to sacrifice some of the traits you like and prioritise the traits you need. If you are so new to this and do not where to start, you can contact UKEC so one of our experienced counsellors can help you find the right university and course for free.

Finally, knowing what the course offers and whether that is what you want to study and how you want to study is more important than the ranking of the university.

Looking for student experience and testimonials

The above two methods are the first useful tools to get you started with your university and course search when you have not had any idea of what is out there for you to choose. Next, after filtering some information by using those two tools, you have selected your shortlisted universities and courses with the most potential for your higher education, it is time for you to go into a more in-depth research. This is because the information you collect from university league tables is not quite detailed and information on the university website is potentially biased or promotional. This is when you look for testimonials from former students who studied at the university.

Testimonials on the university website can be a source of reference. However, it is most likely to be polished and scripted. Students in those videos are most likely to be selected by the university marketing team, which means they have to have positive subjective experience towards the university. Therefore, you can have a look at them but we still recommend to look further.

Reviews on student forums

If you are technology savvy, you can easily find those forums available using Google such as The Student Room, Studento.com and etc. Those forums are where students from different background studying different courses share their experience studying at various university within the UK. The quickest way to find student experience on those forums is to go on there and search for the name of the university you are interested in. A number of threads will come up and you can easily find the conversation which is relevant to what you are looking for.

Student experience via Social media

Students are somehow obsessed with social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube and etc. These are also the popular platforms for students to have conversations about their university experience.

One of the ways to find these conversations is to look at the reviews about the university on its social media platforms. The most popular platform for this method is Facebook where you can easily find the review section and go through all the reviews from students.

University of Derby's Facebook page reviews

Another way to look for genuine reviews is via using hashtags. A lot of universities have created hashtags to drive conversations about themselves. The effect it has on social media is extraordinary because it allows students to express their feelings and thoughts about their university experience easily without going on the university's social media platform to write a review. They can create a more engaging conversation by just using the hashtag which is also easily tracked by the public. If you would like to look for those conversations and reviews, all you need to do is to type #(universityname) onto the search bar of the social media platform and search. All the conversations will come up in the results for you. This way of search will give you the most up-to-date information and vibe about that university life.

#derbyuni search on Twitter

This way is more popular on Instagram or Twitter but you can also use it to look for conversations on Facebook. It will take a few attempts to find the most popular hashtag but you can alter your hashtag to find the one that gives you the most information.

Ask people like you

As an international student, you come from a totally different country which has a completely different culture and education system. It is necessary to ask students from your country who are studying or have studied at the university recently about their university experience. You might be likely to experience the same way. However, remember most of the students do not have the opportunity to experience other universities so their feelings and reviews are likely to be subjective.

In conclusion, you need all of the above methods to collect information and make the right choice. It is not recommended to trust only one source of information. You also need to bear in mind what is the most important trait of a course or university you look at, what is your purpose and career goal to make the right decision. Processing all the information sometimes is too much as well as the stress of deadline coming up so having a personal counsellor who has the knowledge about the industry is recommended for you. They have a training from all the partner universities which means they know each university's strengths and weaknesses. UKEC also offers full package service for free of charge and no deposits so why not contact us just to have an expert guide.