Understanding Uni Rankings and how to use them to help make your university decision

When looking at different university webpages, you might come across references to rankings. The tables that you will most likely come across are the QS World Rankings, and the Times Higher Education Rankings. 
 

What are the QS World Rankings?

According to their website, QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) “is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insight to the global higher education sector, whose mission is to enable motivated people anywhere in the world to fulfil their potential through educational achievement, international mobility, and career development.”

Starting in 2004, QS began ranking universities and their success in the following areas: quality of research being produced, employability after graduation, quality of teaching, and the overall international outlook. These 6 key determining factors became the basis for what is now the QS World Rankings.

Looking at these key factors and comparing them across universities around the world was meant to bring insight into quality of education and promote the outlook on international education.
 

What are the Times Higher Education Rankings?

Also starting in 2004, the Times Higher Education Rankings is an annual publication through Times Higher Education (THE) magazine.  

THE rankings consider 3 primary areas (research, teaching, and impact) but as many as 13 different factors can be accounted for when determining where a university scores in any one primary area. When ranking universities, THE tends to be a bit more in-depth than QS to take in other factors when determining rankings. For example, when looking at research, THE will take into consideration the volume or research compared to the number of staff members.  

Did you know? THE and QS worked together to publish university rankings from 2004-2009! After 2009, THE and QS went their separate ways to consider different factors for ranking universities. Their rankings are now published separately.  
 

What Rankings are Available?

This can vary depending on the table that you are looking at, but typically rankings are done to assess one, or all of the following:

• Student Satisfaction
• Outgoing research from university
• Employability of graduates from university
• Quality of education in general or within a certain subject area

Ranking tables can typically be adjusted using filters so you can determine how universities score against universities in their own country, or against universities around the world.
 

How to Read/Interpret Rankings

Since there are many different tables available to review, it is helpful to look at the rankings in clusters.

The first cluster or top 10 universities are going to be universities that operate competitive and expensive programs. These will be numbers 1-10 on a ranking chart. For reference, these tend to be the largely known universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and similar.

Then if you look at the next cluster of unis in the top 20-50, these universities will offer highly regarded programs, they are great universities with strong academics as well as student satisfaction etc.  

From 50-100 would be the next cluster that you would likely look at and these are still well recognized universities in the UK, quite often they are not quite as well known internationally yet and may not have quite the same levels of funding or research available.  

Some rankings do go beyond 100, but any listed rankings would fall in numerical order so 1 being “the best” in that table. If you are considering how to view rankings above 100, you can look at 100 – X (End of table) or the table or look at smaller groupings of 50 if preferred.  

There are well-over 100 universities across the UK, but some tables include universities outside of the UK as well – rankings really do vary depending on the information used for the table, so analyze these groups in whatever way makes the most sense to you.  

Ultimately, rankings should be used alongside other considerations, but are not necessarily useful on their own when trying to determine the best place to study.  
 

Limitations of Rankings

Limited information available

Not all programmes or subject areas have ranking data available. This means that if ranking were to be considered, a general university ranking table would need to suffice. The limitations with that are that some universities are stronger in certain subject areas when compared to others. Going to a highly ranked university because of their overall institution ranking number might cause you to miss certain universities that excel in other, more specific areas. 

Institution size not typically accounted for

Another limitation that can occur with ranking tables are that smaller institutions are typically overshadowed by the quantity of research and graduates coming from their institutions vs. smaller institutions.  

Larger institutions generally have more funding available and can thus fund more research studies and grow their student intake quicker than the smaller ones can. Does that mean that smaller institutions are unable to produce quality research or education to their students? Of course not! That is why more factors need to be taken into consideration throughout your initial programme research.  
 

How to Use Rankings to Your Advantage

Since ranking tables do tend to include consideration on student satisfaction, it is typically safe to assume that overall, those scoring high in student satisfaction do value their students and what they can bring to the university. This means that on average, you should have a good student experience.

Every student is different so while ranking systems include a different number of universities and considerations depending on the table, there really is no definitive way to rank universities or their programmes. There is also no guarantee that a high ranking will lead to a positive experience (though we hope it will!)

Reviewing rankings and thinking of them in clusters can be used as to help in their decision to choose a university. Ultimately, the suggestion to view rankings in chunks is intended to help students avoid hyper-analyzing the various ranking tables.  

Do not become so focused on rankings that you spend months debating between a university ranked 27th and a university ranked 31st in the table and completely ignore other factors, such as location, departmental specialisms, or even campus size which could all ultimately have a greater impact on the overall experience than ranking alone.  

When reviewing rankings, it is strongly advised that students look at factors beyond rankings to determine what environment will be best to their overall education experience. Remember, the only person who will know what environment is best for your education, is YOU! 

Struggling to know which university you should apply to? Let our student advisors help you narrow down your options.