To not understand why MN posters refer to top RG universities?

[Dolcelatte]

Surely there is Oxbridge, RG and the rest - or is that oversimplifying the position?

I wonder if Shardlakelover was looking for clarification on which of the Russell Group are the 'top' RG universities.

Apart from Oxford, Cambridge and then maybe Imperial, I wouldn't really like to start ranking the remainder (and I'm only ranking those three based on my general perception after a total of 20 years in HE institutes, not usign any detailed comparisons).

Offhand, I couldn't begin to argue whether York is better than Sheffield, which is better than Bristol, or whatever. All eight of my UCAS choices (gimmer) are in there, and apart from one of the 'top' ones , there was fuck all to choose between the rest of them.

Thinking about this I'd be pretty annoyed if my children's school was steering my children towards a RG in order to achieve some form of quality criteria. Surely university choice should be based around what suits the child best.

I went to two rg universities do I get extra points that?

Employers actually care though about whether or not you have the skills to do a job.

Ah, top RG universities. Sorry, shardlake. Um, I always reckoned Durham and Imperial, then maybe Bristol, but that was 30 years ago before RG was invented.

These are the World University Rankings, if you select Europe then list by country you can see a list of UK rankings.

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/

It does make a difference though. A 2.1 degree from a "good" university carried more standing than one from the other unis. Nothing wrong with the other Unis, but given a choice between hiring someone with a 2.2 from Oxbridge vs a 1st from the University of bums on seats, it's Oxbridge every time.

Fancy that.

All these years I've had to suffer people rubbing my nose in the fact that they went to university and I didn't. (Dad's death at an inconvenient moment put paid to that, never go round to it since, can't be bothered).

Not one of these raging snobs has ever mentioned RG - 'top' or otherwise. Incredible.

Keep the peasants in their place.

It's quite an English thing too.

In Scotland we have the ancients- St. Andrews, Edinburgh, glasgow, Aberdeen, the modern 60s ones and the ex polys.

There is quite a strong class divide between who goes where.

Now that there are fees down south I don't imagine many Scottish DCs consider going there anymore, even Oxbridge.

Assumed RG meant Reading.

You can't answer the question o'whats a top university' unless you expand the question to 'top for what?'

In world rankings - only Oxford, Cambridge and imperial make the top 20. UCL and. LSE come next.

For research rankings - measured in a massive national exercise every 5 or 7 years - you can get a ranked list both overall and for each subject group. So you can be top for one subject but in the middle for others whilst being either near the top of the overall list or near the bottom of the overall list.

Or you can be top for graduate destinations - ie have the highest percentage of students in employment after 6 months or 18 months.

Or you can be top for educating the highest number or best prepared vocational graduates - so health professionals and teachers.

You just can't answer the question without more specific criteria.

But in general, the RG unis which appear on most of the lists for most aspects near the top of most of them are the usual suspects - Oxford, Cambridge, imperial, UCL, LSE, Edinburgh, Durham, Bristol. Noting that Durham didn't even join the RG until 2012 so the grouping really doesn't imply much.

RG is fairly meaningless if doing an engineering degree, especially in Scotland as the technical universities like Strathclyde and Heriot Watt aren't there. It seems to have an English bias as old Scottish unis like St Andrews and Aberdeen are also not included.
My son's just finished school in Scotland and RG/nonRG didn't come it to it. He and his friends started with the course they wanted to do and then just looked at course content of the unis/ unistats/ league tables/ what they thought on open days/ which courses played to their strengths and interests/ where they fancied living for 4-5 years.
My husband and I did vocational courses with near 100% employment at non RG unis.
To me it seems to be some unis getting together and trying to bring back the uni/ poly divide but under a different name. When you look at the blurb on their site they do seem to aim to just support each other and exclude non-RG unis (and go on lots of committees)

Another one that hadn't heard of the term RG, but just found out that infact I went to a "top" RG uni!

Does anyone know with those university rankings if they take into account the research funding? So what I'd like to see is a league table for ratio of
output/research funding. It's not fair to compare Caltech to UCL if Caltech receives (for instance) 10x as much funding, then Caltech should produce 10x as much cited research, I would have thought. But do they?

ps, since it was mentioned twice... I think UEA research funding is only about £26million/annum. I looked into this last yr but numbers are only off top of my head. The smallest RG Uni in terms of funding is Exeter, about £45kmillion off top of my head. One of the Oxbridge Unis gets most at maybe £180-200million/yr.

Loughborough is another one that arguably belongs in RG club.

My Uni's official email sig (we are all supposed to use) is a bragfest of statistics about things like our research ratings & student satisfaction. Ridiculous advertising our insecurities like that, I bet Oxbridge academics don't have to.

I find this really odd and I work at one!

I think some RG universities have become a little complacent tbh, as they do not have to try hard to attract students. I would be most interested in the National Student Survey (NSS) as a student.

Upthread a bit but Queen Mary in London is Russell Group? Are we sure? I got in there with a very sorry clutch of A Levels.

I went to a Russell group university preens I feel like I've just won university challenge or something.

QM is pretty big and left 1994 to join RG recently.

Their entry requirements for the equivalent degree programme to ours (we were 1994 too) are below ours. We're too small and specialist to be RG. RG - it doesn't mean what most people seem to think it does...

I started reading this thread because I had no idea what an RG university was - turns out I got my degree from one and my masters from another. Should I be boasting about this? :)

RG seem to be a consortium of businesses seeking (successfully) to position themselves as a premium brand. There seems to be little evidence as to how this benefits undergraduates.

The Guardian league table rank uk universities by various criteria including student satisfaction and percentage with a career after graduation. There is at least one non RG university in the top ten.

I've only just realised that my DC attends a RG university.

Things you learn on Mumsnet!

The guardian rankings for some subjects are just strange, their top ranked Scottish uni for mechanical engineering is Dundee and it doesn't even offer an MEng just a BEng.
I think that as long as league tables continue to put you higher up the league table if you are hard to get into they will be a bit dubious anyway.
A physics professor friend of mine got his uni higher up the league table just by upping their entry requirements, the harder you seem to be to get in to the more people want to try and get there and you appear to be more prestigious. Some of it is a confidence trick.

Oh no! Leicester University isn't a Russell Grant one! How can that be? They invented genetic fingerprinting after all. I'm cross.

Because it's not big enough, it was in the 1994 group.

A physics professor friend of mine got his uni higher up the league table just by upping their entry requirements, the harder you seem to be to get in to the more people want to try and get there and you appear to be more prestigious.

And because some of the league tables, certainly the times, includes A Level grades of freshers, so if you have a lot of mature or non typical students you don't stand a chance.

So you will never see the likes of RADA in the league tables, but if you want to be an actor you would be better off there.

The upping the entry requirements is funny. I can think of two places that did that, and have quietly dropped them again after they couldn't fill the course.