QUB dominates uni rankings, surging up ONE PLACE from last year

In a morning where you may have found yourself defending your UCAS choices to interrogative parents, today marks the annual release of The Guardian newspaper’s university league tables.

The liberal bible publishes its results in an overall category for each university and 53 different subdivided categories based on subject. The scoring is based on criteria like student satisfaction, number of staff per student and spending per student

Queen’s University saw itself move up one spot to 45^th in the overall category of 119 universities.

This puts us at the 2^nd lowest ranking member of the prestigious Russell group, with only Liverpool beating us to the claim of worst redbrick university.

Pull yourself together, QUB

If this piss-poor ranking has shattered your frail, arbitrary-league-derived ego – at least you can comfort yourself in the fact that Ulster came a woeful 82nd place.

While QUB did well in general, it’s the overall low numbers of: staff members per student, spending per student and student satisfaction with feedback that held us back.

But it wasn’t all bad news – out of the 53 subject categories, QUB was ranked in the top 10 for Social work, Sociology, Pharmacy, Media studies, Chemical engineering, Education, Dentistry, Chemistry, Town planning and Agriculture.

We’re also an impressive second in the UK Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Education.

St. Mary’s Education courses just lost out on the top spot to Cambridge. Final year Primary education student Carla Moore, wasn’t surprised by the news:

“There is a certain feeling you get when you’re a student at St. Mary’s which can’t be found in other universities. You’re not just another number here.

“We’re a small and specialist college and there’s a real community feel about the place.”

Cambridge should be worried – Saint Mary’s coming for you

Our Dentists meanwhile, were robbed of first place by Cardiff.

Dentistry second year Jane Downey was buoyed by the small victory. She said: “It’s a great achievement and much needed recognition for how much the school has improved in recent years. But we won’t go and get too big headed like the medics.

“What number where they again? 27th?”

Number 2 and proud; everyone loves an underdog

But in the case of Pharmacy the one university in the entire UK to beat us was QUB students’ favourite punching bag Uni of Ulster.

Final year Pharmacist Brian Scallon took the news gracefully, saying:

“I’d like to congratulate University of Ulster on a great achievement. I think having the top two universities in the UK for Pharmacy based in Northern Ireland is something to be very proud of.”

Fellow final year Pharmacist Nicole McIntyre, added: “But we’re still better than Ulster.”

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