Just all the Russell Group unis ranked by how new they really are

Fancy universities feel like a really big part of UK culture. But lots of Russell Group unis are actually quite new. Some universities are semi-ancient *cough* Oxbridge *cough*. Like, 13 out of 24 Russell Group unis are even older than Edward Cullen was when he married a teenaged girl. But other Russell Group unis haven’t actually been around that long, and are way newer than you might think.

The oldest university in the UK is Oxford. It’s so ancient, that people can’t agree on exactly how old it is. But historians reckon scholars have been stressing about their essays in Oxford since at least 1096. This is a big reason behind why all the Oxford colleges have such crazy amounts of cash. At then other end, the current version of the University of Manchester was only formed in 2004, making it the same age as lots of its students.

Now, quite a few Russell Group unis such as the University of Manchester of Queen Mary University of London were formed when older higher education institutions merged together. This explains why lots of them have buildings that look way older than the universities officially are.

So, here are all the Russell Group unis ranked by how old (or new) they are:

24. University of Oxford – 929 years old (approximately)

23. University of Cambridge – 815 years old

22. University of Glasgow – 574 years old

21. University of Edinburgh – 441 years old

20. University College London (UCL) – 199 years old

19. King’s College London – 196 years old

18. Durham University – 193 years old

17. Queen’s University Belfast – 180 years old

16. University of Exeter – 174 years old

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15. University of Bristol – 148 years old

14. University of Liverpool – 143 years old

13. Cardiff University – 141 years old

12. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 130 years old

11. University of Birmingham – 124 years old

10. University of Leeds – 121 years old

9. University of Sheffield – 120 years old

8. Imperial College London – 118 years old

7. University of Nottingham – 77 years old

6. University of Southampton – 73 years old

=4. Newcastle University – 62 years old

Newcastle Uni used to be called King’s College, and was part of a much bigger institution called the University of Durham

=4. University of York – 62 years old

3. University of Warwick – 60 years old

2. Queen Mary University of London – 36 years old

1. University of Manchester – 21 years old

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Featured image of the University of Glasgow by  Mike Peel. Featu