How important are league tables?

[HairBobbles]

Obviously there are lots of tables and they vary slightly but how relevant are these in the long term?

My son was keen on a couple of places that rank 2/3 down the table but his dad is putting him off as focussed on rankings. He's capable of getting into one of the top ones but doesn't want to go to Oxbridge/Durham/St Andrews. Do employers favour people with a degree from a higher ranked university. He would be applying for an Mchem.

Up to a point. For chemistry, the research ranking is particularly relevant, if he's aiming at actually being a chemist. And the lab facilities. The last time I looked at the guardian ranking it looked very odd - far too much emphasis on nebulous unreliable metrics like 'student satisfaction'.

But there are quite a lot of good solid chemistry departments.

They’re mostly a load of tosh based on unreliable, overly ‘sensitive’ metrics. I work at a university, btw.

If your son wants to study chemistry find out where the best depts are (his chemistry teachers at school should know this, or you can speak to academic staff at open days - they’ll usually be honest about that stuff). Make sure you find out lots about what they cover in the course, teaching group sizes, methods of assessment and whatnot.

Chemistry teachers at school may be out of date and have somewhat limited experience IME.

There are some Russell group universities that do not have Chemistry departments. MN seems obsessed with RG universities but the reality is that there are lots of courses that are better taught outside RG institutions.

Is your DC looking to go into academia or study Chemistry and find a related job? If they want to go into academia, then where you study is important. If they want a degree in a subject they enjoy and are good at, I think it is more important to be happy in the location, which obviously varies according to the student and their interests.

As an example. I teach a y13 student who wants to be a vet. She has done lots of relevant work experience, is working on a related EPQ and generally has her head screwed on. However, she is determined that she wants to go to one particular institution. I have suggested that she needs to consider others which are potentially more prestigious but she is determined. My role is to support her and whilst I might not agree with her route, by explaining her options, I feel that I have done my job.

OP, your DS should apply to a range of places that suit his interests. As a parent, all you can do is offer advice; doing so by validating their ideas tends to be better received than forcing them into something they might not want.

I work in the city and help with recruitment. It is imperative the applicant went to a RG. We don’t even look at non-RG. This is consulting / finance. I also have seen similar at Unilever.

So he is capable of getting all A/A* . I suppose the universities I’m wondering about that seem to rank lower than expected would be the big RG ones like Birmingham/ Sheffield /Leeds. High in overall tables but for chemistry much lower than I’d have imagined they would be.

He needs to go and visit. DP has an MChem and turned down Cambridge at the time due to poor lab facilities and didn't like the general vibe. Also turned down Newcastle as they told him he could skip the first year completely , so he didn't have too much faith in the level of the course. He went to Manchester (and they offered him a fully funded PhD at the end of it).

So auders, you wouldn't look at someone from St Andrews, or Bath. Right. Your loss.

Lots of the highest rates places aren’t RG. He will visit where he can but not possible for everywhere for example no in person visits to York. If league tables didn’t exist it would kind of be easier but the fact they are there is confusing him tbh.

I agree that rankings are important for future employment - depends on the sector

The Guardian rankings are bizarre and they will often place lower ranked universities above RG based on student satisfaction rather than research or academics.

I find when people talk about RG that are also including the well known ranked universities. Even within the RG there is their own ranking. A few also have been a bit lazy in the past and relied on the status and not the quality. The balance is the highest ranked that he feels comfortable with.

@HairBobbles

So he is capable of getting all A/A* . I suppose the universities I’m wondering about that seem to rank lower than expected would be the big RG ones like Birmingham/ Sheffield /Leeds. High in overall tables but for chemistry much lower than I’d have imagined they would be.

Which tables are you looking at? I'm a chemist and I'd have thought any of those would be fine.

So for example the complete university guide has Sheffield at 21, guardian at 33 ( below Sheffield Hallam ) and university list at 24. It seems to sit around this level. I just find it surprising but like I say my husband feels this is reason to discount a place given there are so many higher.

Discount the guardian league tables - it appears semi-random and doesn't include research rankings at all.

As to the CUG - I'm not sure I'd agree with the exact order but it's ok - but essentially what I'd say is that the U.K. is fortunate enough to have 30 or more unis which no sensible employer of chemists would sneer at. There are too many perfectly fine choices to fit into a top 10!

For Chemistry, there are a lot of universities that are ranked very close together.

That is one of the reasons you see such volatility in the rankings and you can see universities rising and falling by such a large number of places in a single year. Take Imperial, for example, according the table last year it was 21st in the rankings. This year, it was 3rd. Conversely, Nottingham Trent was ranked higher than Imperial last year, at 19th. This year it is 40th.

In reality most of the things measured in the rankings, such as entry tarrif points, university spending, number of staff, graduate outcomes, do not change massively year on year, just the rankings do.

@Piggywaspushed

So auders, you wouldn't look at someone from St Andrews, or Bath. Right. Your loss.

But Piggy, we all know that the label on the tin is more important than the contents...

And the response at least answers the question, Do league tables matter? in this particular case, if this recruiter would choose any RG graduate over one from a higher-ranked non-RG University.

Oh and of course that policy saves the recruiter checking the given university's league table ranking(s) for each year of an applicant's association with it, let alone the actual content of their cv.

Or perhaps the firm(s) concerned genuinely believe that the RG universities are the 24 best, by whatever metric, for any subject taught by them and therefore any of their graduates ?with a 2:1 or 1st will automatically be in the top 24 / 160+ (or however many degree-awarding bodies there are) of all graduates with a 2:1 or 1st.

As long as they don't (at least detectably) discriminate against applicants with protected characteristics, employers do have a certain amount of latitude when setting requirements and I'm sure it is stated cleverly in their spec that the posts are only suitable for graduates of RG universities.

The husband is right. It will be with your son his whole life and people who know the harder to get into universities (does not matter who you describe them but that is the gist of it) will know if he went there or not.

Also he will meet people on his level academically if it is a place where people with his level of A levels etc goes so it will matter for lots of other reasons too.

Best thing is to look at newly recruited people at the place he wants to work after (looking at a few careers if he isn't sure which) -look at their linkedin profiles to see which university was theirs (and also discount any outliers - eg someone on FSM fro my native NE who is the unusual one from Sunderland ex poly they let in due to trying to help the disadvantaged - those are just outliers so ignore them - look at the majority and only the young people not the old people and see where they went to university). Some websites of companies will also show those details but not all eg barristers' chambers give the CV of each barrister - look at the youngest ones.

@audersandbaby

I work in the city and help with recruitment. It is imperative the applicant went to a RG. We don’t even look at non-RG. This is consulting / finance. I also have seen similar at Unilever.

I work in corporate finance in London for a global firm so appreciate different from chemistry but we interview blind so we do not request information as to which Uni they went to so this is not included on their application form. We want the best candidates each year and where they did their A levels and degree is irrelevant

@audersandbaby

I work in the city and help with recruitment. It is imperative the applicant went to a RG. We don’t even look at non-RG. This is consulting / finance. I also have seen similar at Unilever.

How unbelievably limiting and short sighted.

@Parker231 I can understand how that would work at the interview stage, but what about the initial assessment? What happens if you get hundreds of applications, how can you filter /shortlist blind? Do you rely only on the company specific psychometric testing etc?

[quote Bluebris]@Parker231 I can understand how that would work at the interview stage, but what about the initial assessment? What happens if you get hundreds of applications, how can you filter /shortlist blind? Do you rely only on the company specific psychometric testing etc?[/quote]
If you're shortlisting purely on university attended then you need to seriously revisit your recruitment and selection processes.

And people wonder why social mobility is declining in the uk 🙄

@SkinnyMirror No, this was a genuine question; I work in a completely unrelated field -clinical care- so I am just trying to get my head around how the recruitment process works in the UK :)

Thing is most of the initial recruiting are not done by the actual people who would choose the candidate. To get to meet with the boss the candidates would have already been filtered out. So each company would have. A policy and those in HR or recruiting would filter out on a tick box level as per criteria and not scrutinise all the candidate's details. This comes towards the end.

So I think go for the most reputable place for your degree if you don't have an idea of the field you want to go into. If you do then it's easier as Xenia said, you can look at the credentials of recent graduate hires at your target work places