How we rank universities

All figures are for full-time undergraduate honours degrees. Part-time courses, foundation degrees and postgraduate study are not included.

• Student satisfaction. Average share of final-year students responding positively across the seven National Student Survey themes.
• Entry standards. Average UCAS Tariff points of entrants, estimated from the published points distribution.
• Graduate prospects. Share of graduates in professional or managerial jobs 15 months after finishing.
• Graduate salary. Typical (median) salary of employed graduates 15 months after finishing.
• Continuation. Share of students who are still studying or have completed, rather than dropped out, a year after starting.

The source data is published course by course. Small courses often share figures with others in the same subject, so the same numbers can appear many times over. We first reduce the data to distinct groups of students, then average across subjects weighted by how many students each group has. Without this step, a university with many small courses in one subject would have that subject counted many times.

Each of the five measures is standardised so they can be compared on the same scale, then combined with these weights:

• Student satisfaction: 25%
• Entry standards: 20%
• Graduate prospects: 20%
• Graduate salary: 20%
• Continuation: 15%

The combined result is rescaled so that the top university scores 100 and the lowest ranked scores 0. The score shows relative position, not a percentage of anything.

To appear in the overall ranking a university needs all five measures and at least 500 students in its survey population. This leaves out very small and specialist institutions, whose figures can swing a long way on a handful of students. The single-measure rankings include any university with at least 50 students behind that figure.

• Entry points are an estimate. Tariff data is published as a spread of points bands, so the average uses the middle of each band. Scottish universities tend to score higher on this measure because applicants there usually hold more qualifications that each carry Tariff points.
• Salaries reflect subject mix. A university that teaches mostly medicine, engineering or economics will show higher graduate pay than one strong in the arts, regardless of teaching quality.
• Nothing here covers research. These rankings are about the undergraduate experience and outcomes, which is why they can differ from research-led global tables.