Rankings of universities in the United Kingdom

Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually by the [|Complete] University Guide and The [|Guardian], as well as a collaborative list by The [|Times] and The Sunday Times. Rankings have also been produced in the past by The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times.
British universities rank highly in global university rankings with eight featuring in the top 100 of all three major global rankings as of 2024: QS, Times Higher Education, and ARWU. The national rankings differ from global rankings with a focus on the quality of undergraduate education, as opposed to research prominence and faculty citations.
The primary aim of domestic rankings is to inform prospective undergraduate applicants about universities based on a range of criteria, including: entry standards, student satisfaction, staff–student ratio, expenditure per student, research quality, degree classifications, completion rates, and graduate outcomes. All of the league tables also rank universities in individual subjects.
As of 2025, the top-five ranked universities in the United Kingdom are Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, St Andrews, and Durham, with Imperial College London, Bath and Warwick also appearing in the top ten of all three rankings.

Summary of national rankings

From 2008 to 2022, the three main national rankings—Complete, Guardian, and Times—were averaged each year to form an overall league table by the Times Higher Education Table of Tables; in its final edition, the top-five universities were Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, St Andrews, and Imperial.

Rankings published in 2025 for the prospective year 2026 (1–25)

Rankings published in 2025 for the prospective year 2026 (26–130)

League tables and methodologies

There are three main domestic league tables in the United Kingdom: the Complete University Guide, The Guardian, and The Times/''The Sunday Times''.

''Complete University Guide''

The Complete University Guide is compiled by Mayfield University Consultants and was published for the first time in 2007.
The ranking uses ten criteria, with a statistical technique called the Z-score applied to the results of each. The effect of this is to ensure that the weighting given to each criterion is not distorted by the choice of scale used to score that criterion. The ten Z-scores are then weighted and summed to give a total score for each university. These total scores are then transformed to a scale where the top score is set at 1,000, with the remainder being a proportion of the top score. The ten criteria are:

"Academic services spend" – expenditure per student on all academic services – data source: Higher Education Statistics Agency ;
"Degree completion" – a measure of the completion rate of students ;
"Entry standards" – average UCAS Tariff score of new students under the age of 21 ;
"Facilities spend" – expenditure per student on staff and student facilities ;
"Good honours" – the proportion of first and upper-second-class honours, phased out ;
"Graduate prospects" – a measure of the employability of graduates ;
"Research quality" – a measure of the average quality of research – data source: Research Excellence Framework ;
"Research intensity" – a measure of the fraction of staff who are research-active ;
"Student satisfaction" – a measure of the view of students on the teaching quality ;
"Student–staff ratio" – a measure of the average staffing level.
''The Guardian''

The Guardian ranking uses nine different criteria, each weighted between 5 and 15 per cent. Unlike other annual rankings of British universities, the criteria do not include a measure of research output. A "value-added" factor is included which compares students' degree results with their entry qualifications, described by the newspaper as being "ased upon a sophisticated indexing methodology that tracks students from enrolment to graduation, qualifications upon entry are compared with the award that a student receives at the end of their studies". Tables are drawn up for subjects, with the overall ranking being based on an average across the subjects rather than on institutional level statistics. The nine criteria are:

"Entry scores" ;
"Assessment and feedback" – as rated by graduates of the course ;
"Career prospects" ;
"Overall satisfaction" – final-year students' opinions about the overall quality of their course ;
"Expenditure per student" ;
"Student-staff ratio" ;
"Teaching" – as rated by graduates of the course ;
"Value added" ;
"Continuation".
''The Times/The Sunday Times''

The Times/The Sunday Times university league table, known as the Good University Guide, is published in both electronic and print format. Since 1999, the guide also recognises one university annually as University of the Year. It ranks institutions using the following eight criteria:

"Student satisfaction " – the results of national student surveys are scored taking a theoretical minimum and maximum score of 50% and 90% respectively ;
"Teaching excellence " – defined as: subjects scoring at least 22/24 points, those ranked excellent, or those undertaken more recently in which there is confidence in academic standards and in which teaching and learning, student progression and learning resources have all been ranked commendable ;
"Heads'/peer assessments " – school heads are asked to identify the highest-quality undergraduate provision ;
"Research quality " – based upon the most recent Research Assessment Exercise ;
"A-level/Higher points " – nationally audited data for the subsequent academic year are used for league table calculations ;
"Unemployment " – the number of students assume to be unemployed six months after graduation is calculated as a percentage of the total number of known desbefore completing their courses is compared with the number expected to do so .

Other criteria considered are:

"Completion" – the percentage of students who manage to complete their degree;
"Entry standards" – the average UCAS tariff score ;
"Facilities spending" – the average expenditure per student on sports, careers services, health and counselling;
"Good honours" – the percentage of students graduating with a first or 2.1;
"Graduate prospects" – the percentage of UK graduates in graduate employment or further study ;
"Library and computing spending" – the average expenditure on library and computer services per student ;
"Research" ;
"Student satisfaction" ; and
"Student-staff ratio".
Disparity with global rankings

It has been commented by The Sunday Times that a number of universities which regularly feature in the top ten of British university league tables, such as St Andrews, Durham and LSE, "inhabit surprisingly low ranks in the worldwide tables", whilst other universities such as Manchester, Edinburgh and KCL "that failed to do well in the domestic rankings have shone much brighter on the international stage". The considerable disparity in rankings has been attributed to the different methodology and purpose of global university rankings such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, QS World University Rankings, and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. International university rankings primarily use criteria such as academic and employer surveys, the number of citations per faculty, the proportion of international staff and students and faculty and alumni prize winners.
When size is taken into account, LSE ranks second in the world out of all small to medium-sized specialist institutions and St Andrews ranks second in the world out of all small to medium-sized fully comprehensive universities using metrics from the QS Intelligence Unit in 2015. The national rankings, on the other hand, give most weighting to the undergraduate student experience, taking account of teaching quality and learning resources, together with the quality of a university's intake, employment prospects, research quality and drop-out rates.
The disparity between national and international league tables has caused some institutions to offer public explanations for the difference. LSE for example states on its website that 'we remain concerned that all of the global rankings – by some way the most important for us, given our highly international orientation – suffer from inbuilt biases in favour of large multi-faculty universities with full STEM offerings, and against small, specialist, mainly non-STEM universities such as LSE.'
Research by the UK's Higher Education Policy Institute in 2016 found that global rankings fundamentally measure research performance, with research-related measures accounting for over 85 percent of the weighting for both the Times Higher Education and QS rankings and 100 percent of the weighting for the ARWU ranking. HEPI also found that ARWU made no correction for the size of an institution. There were also concerns about the data quality and the reliability of reputation surveys. National rankings, while said to be "of varying validity", have more robust data and are "more highly regarded than international rankings".

British universities in global rankings

The following universities rank in the top 100 in at least two global rankings:

University	ARWU 2025	QS 2026	THE 2026	#^a
University of Cambridge	4	6	3=
University of Oxford	6	4	1
University College London	14	9	22
Imperial College London	26	2	8
University of Edinburgh	37	34	29
University of Manchester	46	35	56
King's College London	61	31	38
University of Bristol	98	51	80=
University of Glasgow	101–150	79	84
London School of Economics	151–200	56	52
University of Birmingham	151–200	76	98=

Notes:
^a Number of times the university is ranked within the top 100 of one of the three global rankings.

^b The university is ranked within the top 25 of all three global rankings.

^c The university is ranked within the top 50 of all three global rankings.