Which uni list is best to go on re engineering? Guardian list varies hugely to the Complete Uni guide

[3asyp33l3r]

Not sure which to go by.

There's about a billion very recent threads on Engineering - maybe read them rather than ask people to keep repeating the same old stuff.

I have but this question wasn’t on any of them. Swipe on if you’ve got nothing to offer, wasn’t aware we had thread police and pretty sure we can post what we like .

The lists use different methodologies for ranking/weightings.
Guardian has more weighting on student satisfaction. Some would say too much, so you can get odd entries. E.g. think Bolton was 2nd in English a few years ago IIRC.
Would start with CUG if using them.

Ok that’s good to know, thanks.

@3asyp33l3r

I have but this question wasn’t on any of them. Swipe on if you’ve got nothing to offer, wasn’t aware we had thread police and pretty sure we can post what we like .

The fifth or sixth one down in Higher Education is called 'Best unis for Engineering', last posted on this afternoon.

TLDR - it's Engineering. It doesn't matter as long as it's accredited.

Imperial College. Brunel.

Best unis for engineering is not what I asked. I’m enquiring as to which list is best to go by.

As I said swipe on.

Look at the criteria each list uses and decide which ones are most important to you.

@3asyp33l3r

Best unis for engineering is not what I asked. I’m enquiring as to which list is best to go by.

As I said swipe on.

There is no 'best' list. It depends on what you're looking for.

I think I may have commented on the rankings in one of those other threads... the guardian lists appear to be semi random. You may be able to extract some useful info if you look at the individual columns and ignore the soft, unreliable metrics eg 'student satisfaction' which may just be a measure of 'more easily satisfied students'.

The CUG seems more realistic, as is the Times Good University guide

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/good-university-guide-in-full

Im not sure if you need to be a Times subscriber to use this, here's a screenshot of the top part of the ranking for Mechanical Engineering.

When DD was working out where to go, we got a copy of the Times Good University Guide - they update it each year. It had a lot more info than can be encapsulated in a league table.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Good-University-Guide-2022/dp/0008419469/ref=sr11_1?adgrpid=129663502&hvadid=80814136628782&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=131398&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-1018218444%3Aloc-188&keywords=times+good+university+guide&qid=1636054860&s=books&sr=1-1

Finally, there's the QS rankings, which are global but you can filter by country as well as subject.

TLDR - it's Engineering. It doesn't matter as long as it's accredited.

Bit of an oversimplification there, titchy!

Ok so what does each list focus on? That too isn’t answered in previous threads. If you haven’t anything helpful to offer nobody is forcing you to post.

Thanks Errol that’s really helpful.

Each of the lists has a number of columns which is combined to give an overall score. You can see for yourself. Iirc the guardian completely misses out research rankings. That may not matter much for some students/'vocational' courses, but does (IMO) if the student is a fairly high flyer in a STEM subject.

@ErrolTheDragon

TLDR - it's Engineering. It doesn't matter as long as it's accredited.

Bit of an oversimplification there, titchy!

I know! But it's like medicine, it gets you the same qualification that employers ask for and is sought after. Assuming you want to be an engineer really the best place is one that gets you the certification needed, and that you'll enjoy studying at - you won't get an MEng if you drop out after six months because you hate living in Cambridge/Coventry.

Guardian doesn't include research as a metric. Others do but research is the same for eight years so the tables are more stable than the Guardian.

Cug and times excluded entry requirements this year as well because of grade inflation.

So what's left is drop out rates, proportion of 1sts and 2:1s, student satisfaction and graduate jobs. Rank by whatever is important to you.

So... using that screenshot as an example, the graduate prospects are important to everyone, the top of the table has good to very good percentages - they tend to get lower further down the table. Entry points - well, that needs to be looked at relative to the students likely grades. If you sort by that then you can filter out any which are either unattainable or might be lower than they'd want to consider.
And so forth.

Proportion of firsts and 2:1s doesn't necessarily compare well between unis, so that's a metric to be a bit wary of. Cambridge engineering rather quaintly insists on awarding no more than 30% firsts and 50% 2:1s, despite other unis and subjects awarding far more.

The ones which use entry standards tend to weight scottish unis a bit high because the Scottish qualifications translate as more points I believe.

....it's understanding these sorts of quirks which may make the MN lists somewhat useful.

ignore the soft, unreliable metrics eg 'student satisfaction' which may just be a measure of 'more easily satisfied students'.

The "student satisfaction" columns are based on the Office for Students (OfS)'s National Student Survey (NSS), which is one of the three factors that contributes to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). So if you're going to ignore the Guardian league tables, you should also ignore the Complete University Guide and any reference to TEF gold, silver or bronze awards.

If you look at the CUG or Guardian tables you'll see columns referring to satisfaction. You'll also see that these columns are blank for Oxford & Cambridge, because their students refuse to complete the NSS. So the overall score for those two universities is calculated differently from the others.

None of the metrics in league tables (or TEF) are reliable, and some of them are frankly misleading. It would be foolish to believe that one university is better or worse than another a few places above or below it in a made-up league table.

@3asyp33l3r

Ok so what does each list focus on? That too isn’t answered in previous threads. If you haven’t anything helpful to offer nobody is forcing you to post.

Don't the lists have columns of different factors?

Cambridge and Imperial College are probably the most renowned for Engineering in the UK

Otherwise there's great Engineering Unis abroad - Germany, Switzerland, US, Canada etc

But it's like medicine, it gets you the same qualification that employers ask for and is sought after

I think the employment prospects with a Cambridge or Imperial degree will be particularly good. I do think there's a big difference as to which Uni applicants graduate from

Medicine is totally different! Far fewer courses and employment guaranteed afterwards. Engineering has a huge number of courses and options snd is very different. Most students decide what branch of engineering they want before they apply. This isn’t the case with medicine. So you simply cannot compare these two. Additionally engineering has BEng and Meng. Medicine doesn’t.

Moving on! The Guardian tables are odd! Ignore them. The others need to split down into engineering disciplines with general engineering ignored if you don’t want it. Durham, Oxford and Cambridge don’t offer all disciplines of engineering so these may not be relevant universities for very many students who know what they want from the start. Again, the vast majority do!

After that, the great engineering universities are fairly obvious and there’s no need to go to Scotland. Do Meng if you can and I can assure you NO employer will worry if a university is 9th or 19th on the lists if the student has the necessary attributes! As a rough guide, the old red bricks offer great engineering courses plus a few new ones like Warwick and Loughborough. It’s not easy to choose but the league tables don’t tell you everything!

My DH finds grads from Portsmouth tick the boxes for their company! Not high up I’m league tables but turn out employable practical engineers. Who would have thought it!

I wen to imperial very recently and it very much set me up for life but it is brutal. The academic rigorous was so high I had no social life and missed the uni experience really. I was in the lab from 9am till midnight every day during my final year.

Looking back although people love the Imperial degree I may have gone to Southampton if I had my time again I was nowhere near as rounded as my friends that went to other unis.