Deep breaths everyone, these Russell Group unis have the most stressed students in 2025

Going to university is a fundamentally stressful thing. You’ve only got three years to figure out how to adult, deal with constant flatmate drama and get a job to cover your rent, and occasionally find time to do some actual studying? Workloads tend to be worse at the UK’s prestigious Russell Group unis. You might have to even turn up to a lecture every now and then. A new study examined loads of factors to work out the most stressful areas of the UK. Loads of cities with Russell Group unis made it into the list. Whelp.

Apparently the University of Nottingham is the Russell Group uni where students are the most stressed in 2025. Apparently people in Nottingham are way more concerned about finding jobs than people are in other parts of the UK. Sorry, Notts students. At the other end, people are the least stressed in York. I suppose the students there just look at a picture of Long Boi and feel all their troubles melt away.

To work out the cities where people are the most stressed, Electric Tobacconist analysed lots of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) concerning levels of anxiety and happiness, unemployment rates and access to green spaces. They used these statistics to calculate a “stress score” for each area of the UK.

So, here are the Russell Group unis where students are the most stressed in 2025, based on the “stress score” of the area where the main campus is:

16. University of York – 40.4 stress score

15. Queen Mary University of London – 41.5 stress score

14. University College London (UCL) – 43.9 stress score

=12. King’s College London and the London School of Economics (LSE) – 44.9 stress score

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11. University of Leeds – 47.0 stress score

Leeds scored particularly badly for access to green spaces

10. University of Bristol – 49.6 stress score

9. Imperial College London – 50.8 stress score

8. University of Sheffield – 55.1 stress score

7. University of Southampton – 58.0 stress score

6. University of Manchester – 58.3 stress score

I’m pretty certain Manchester students just channel all this nervous energy into clubbing

5. Newcastle University – 59.0 stress score

4. University of Warwick – 61.3 stress score

3. University of Liverpool – 63.5 stress score

2. University of Birmingham – 65.4 stress score

1. University of Nottingham – 69.5 stress score

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