University rankings can help you compare universities, but they should not be treated as a definitive measure of which university is best for you. Different ranking systems use different criteria and weightings, so the same university can receive very different rankings depending on what is being measured.

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I break this down with UK marker examples in the video.

How Are University Rankings Constructed?

University ranking systems are made up of a variety of criteria with different weightings.

For example, in the Times Higher Education rankings, teaching makes up 29.5% of the ranking consideration. There is also a heavy weighting on teaching and research reputations and citation impact. According to THE, citation impact refers to the “average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally”.

Other ranking systems use different weightings and different sets of criteria. This results in different rankings across systems.

As you can see, rankings are not built the same, which helps explain why there is so much variability between them.

Should You Use Overall University Rankings When Choosing a University?

If you are looking for a Taught Masters programme, you will most likely be interested in teaching quality, while research may be less important to you.

If you are looking for a PhD programme, research might be a greater priority. If that is the case, a university’s overall ranking, which includes all the metrics, may be less useful for you.

Some rankings allow you to rank universities according to individual metrics and subjects. This can give you more pertinent information for your decision.

To use this information effectively, you should also read what the individual metrics actually include. There are also metrics that may be particularly useful for students, such as diversity and equality, which are not reported in some ranking tables.

Are University Ranking Methodologies Reliable?

The methodologies used by university rankings have been quite widely disputed.

For example, Jelena Brankovic explained how a university can jump 120 ranks within two years because one researcher at the university was part of a global study involving hundreds of researchers who co-published a widely cited paper.

Fauzi et al. published a paper in 2020 pointing out a number of statistical flaws in the way rankings are constructed in QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), THE and ARWU (Academic Ranking of World Universities).

QS was critiqued for relying heavily on surveys that change from year to year. ARWU was critiqued for not considering teaching or employability and focusing only on research.

This means that the position a university receives in a ranking table can depend heavily on how the ranking system has been designed and what it chooses to measure.

Can University Rankings Be Manipulated?

Rankings can also be manipulated.

In 2018, false data was submitted to US News & World Report for ranking purposes to deceive applicants and donors by the former dean of Temple University.

A Columbia Mathematics Professor also pointed out some inconsistent numbers that were reported for ranking purposes and indicated where data presented could be misleading, potentially contributing to an artificially high ranking of Columbia University.

In Ireland, Trinity College Dublin was accused of influencing the survey used to decide rankings at QS and THE when an email went out to academics to raise awareness about the surveys.

These examples are another reason to be cautious about treating rankings as an objective measure of university quality.

Why Can University Rankings Be Misleading for Applicants?

As students, we can be quite swayed by rankings because we are trying to research universities that we may never have heard of. Rankings quite literally claim to tell you which is the top university.

Universities know that, and they use rankings to attract attention. It is common to see universities promoting themselves as being in the top 100 or top 50.

These are very attractive headlines, but they can sometimes be misleading because they do not always explicitly say top for which measure.

You can quite easily find universities making claims about being among the top universities while referring to different measures or ranking systems.

The metrics themselves can also be particularly hard to decipher as an applicant. It is not easy to navigate the mass of data even if you wanted to look into each metric used by the ranking tables.

How Should You Use University Rankings When Choosing a University?

Take rankings with a pinch of salt and do not make your decisions merely on rankings alone.

Have a look at the student satisfaction surveys that are conducted. Look at teaching and research excellence frameworks, which all have their own issues as well. Speak to students on university forums and read about the research areas that the university is active in.

You can also look into the facilities offered by the university, check out video tours of the universities and watch vlogs by YouTubers at the university.

Ensure that you are looking at a variety of information before you make a decision.

You also need to remember that rankings are just rankings. You are looking for a university for yourself, so think about what you value.

Is it sustainability? Friends and connections? Future career prospects?

Look into the decision table to help you structure your thoughts around this.