Source: Alamy
The University of Cambridge has held on to its position at the top of the sixth annual Times Higher Education “Table of Tables”.
The top five, based on the combined results of the UK’s three main domestic university league tables, remains unchanged from last year, with the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics, the University of St Andrews and Durham University completing the quintet.
Cambridge secured maximum points after coming out on top of The Complete University Guide, and in rankings published by The Guardian and the new combined Times and Sunday Times tables in the Good University Guide.
The big climbers were the University of Surrey, which leaped eight places from 19th to 11th, and the University of Birmingham, which moved from 23rd to 15th. It was also a good year for the University of East Anglia, which moved up seven places to 18th, while the universities of Sheffield and Leicester climbed four places each to 23rd and 14th respectively.
At the other end of the scale, the University of Sussex dropped out of the table altogether after finishing 21st in 2012. It failed to make the top 30 of any of the three rankings, scoring zero in our Table of Tables tally. The University of Glasgow recorded the second biggest slump, dropping six places from 16th to 22nd.
Meanwhile, Soas, University of London re-entered the table in 25th position after failing to make the top 20 last year, while the University of Manchester and the University of Kent also scraped back into the top 30, finishing 29th and th respectively.