City University, London

[LetMeThinkAboutThat]

Does anyone have any idea of ideas why City has dropped 20 places this yr in the league tables? i always thought it was a 'decent', with particular strengths in finance type subjects etc with terrific links to the London city. Some years ago it joined the University of London so is also now one of their colleges. So i'm rather surprised its dropped from its usual position of low 40 something to 66th! Any ideas?

p.s DS is thinking of putting it as his insurance.

[crazyhead]

The league tables criteria sometimes change, and this can make a huge difference to outcomes. Every time that a university gets a really cushy ranking, there's a debate internally about how much to show off in the PR material, cos everyone knows that future shifts in the criteria (quite apart from variations in performance) can see you having to manage messages about a drop the next time the tables come round.

Criteria are also very varied; from student satisfaction through to number of papers published in a particular top journal.

I don't know what happened at all in this particular case, but this is the way that tables work. I say this as someone who worked for years in the sector.

Also as someone from the sector, I would add to the earlier point that really good quality, and a wonderful experience, is often found at the local level (because you are doing a fantastic course or are in a great department) rather than at a univerisity level. Believe you me, the big names are really not a guarantee that you'll have a great experience, although of course you will have at least have one of those names on your CV. So if your son has a great feel about the course, I don't see why the drop would be much of an issue.