These are the UK’s top 5 universities right now, according to the most respected rankings

We are just under a month away from the biggest week in the sticky-floored club calendar year – freshers. Soon, tens of thousands of teenagers will celebrate the beginning of a brand new chapter by flocking to elite institutions across the country and drinking up enough supermarket own-brand vodka to knock out a small elephant.

Although most 18-year-olds temporarily forget it, the real reason they’ll be headed to uni is for an education. Britain is home to some of the most revered institutes of learning in the world in a variety of subjects, but rarely do rankings seem to agree on who is the absolute best of the best. 

You might think it’s easy to determine what the ‘best’ university in the country is, but it depends on a load of factors. If you’re going by student satisfaction, Ulster University is your champ. If you ask QS, known for its highly prestigious world ratings, Imperial College London is not only the UK’s best but the second best school in the world, but the Complete University Guide (CUG), also a reputable source, gave the gold to Cambridge.

Basically, there’s no single ‘best’ place to study, but if you’re headed off to uni this year you might be interested in how your prospective place of study stacks up against the rest. We’ve been keeping track of all the most important rankings so that you don’t have to, and we’ve decided to compile them all in one place right here, because if there’s one thing no uni student enjoys it’s having to read more than is absolutely required.

The top five universities in Britain as told by the Complete University Guide:

1. University of Cambridge
2. University of Oxford
3. London School of Economics and Politics (LSE)
4. University of St Andrews
5. Imperial College London

If you trust QS world rankings more, these are the five best, including their international placements:

1. (2) Imperial College London
2. (3) University of Oxford 
3. (5) University of Cambridge
4. (9) University College London
5. (27) University of Edinburgh

According to students (ie StudentCrowd), the best places to study at are:

1. Ulster University
2. University of Sheffield
3. University of Birmingham
4. University of St Andrews
5. Queen’s University Belfast

And finally, these are Times Higher Education’s picks for the cream of the crop:

1. University of Oxford 
2. University of Cambridge
3. Imperial College London

If you don’t see your alma mater, don’t let it get you down. None of these are exhaustive lists of where to go for a quality education, and they change all the time, but if reading about them has inspired you suddenly to reach for the stars, quite a few will have spaces available in clearing this year – which you can learn about here. Happy learning!

What’s going on in the UK?

For such a small country we’ve always got a lot happening. For instance, one of the world’s best bars is headed our way, and so are brand new flight paths from Liverpool John Lennon Airport. We’ve also got four of the world’s best beaches, and we’re reinventing the art of camping.

Did you see that one of the world’s most famous artists is taking over Liverpool Cathedral?

ICYMI: New rail passes will give you unlimited train journeys around Wales this summer