Inconsistency between various university league tables

[PavingTheWay]

My DD wants to do pure mathematics for her undergrad. So I was looking at following league tables (filtered for mathematics): QS, THE, Shanghai, Guardian, TheCompleteUniversityGuide.

I see that they significantly differ in terms of the ranking for some universities. For example, St Andrews has world ranking 100 and 165 respectively for QS and THE; Shanghai does not even list it. In comparison, Imperial is 9th in both of them and 18th in Shanghai. However, in Guardian and TCUG, story is totally different. St Andrews is 3rd in UK in both, while Imperial is 8th and 9th resp. I am not concerned about absolute rank; but on the ordering between them - of course, with some acceptable randomness.

How should I make sense of this? Is this due the perspective difference between international and domestic students?

I really think when it gets to the top unis it's irrelevant, as in the three years she is there it will change anyway.

What's important is she likes rhe unis, the style of teaching, their ethos, their campus etc, that's what to focus on.

Take a look at the actual metrics that make up the tables. The Shanghai Jiao Tong is especially random - one of its criteria is how many books an institution holds. They don't have to be unique titles an institution could buy a million copies of Noddy goes to Toyland and bump themselves several places up the rankings!

Exactly, look what’s taken into account in the rankings and what weight it’s given. You might find that some of it is quite irrelevant to how her experience is going to be or how much she’ll learn.

Guardian has higher weighting of satisfaction, so can have some anomalies compared to Times and CUG.

Ditto what other people said - look carefully at what information constitutes the tables.

For example, in the complete university guide the Entry Standards score is the average UCAS tariff score of new undergraduate students NOT the grades equivalent of the standard offer for the course. This includes the UCAS points derived from drama/music and dance exams for example.

Some of the universities with the highest proportion of independent school students (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Imperial, St.Andrews, Bristol, Edinburgh, UCL, LSE, Exeter, Bath etc) also typically occupy some of the top slots, but their ranking could well be bolstered by privately educated students who arrive with their Grade 8 music, Lamda, ballet, drama and horse-riding qualifications!

They measure different things. Some are about research rather than undergraduate teaching, for instance. Some include employability or percentages going on to higher degrees.

For maths, the ones that want Further Maths are often the gold standard. Also do they want tests such as STEP and at what level? After that, type of university, location and course content are important to an individual. I think The Times and CUG are better regarding tables.

I spent alot of time looking at rankings and came to the conclusion that the best was the Times Educational one was the best. Also very useful to consult unistats for basic stats, and what
uni for reviews, which are actually very enlightening.

It’s to do with how the metrics are weighted.