Cambridge University tops Complete University Guide Rankings

The Complete University Guide has dropped its highly anticipated rankings for 2026 and Cambridge places first overall – but not for student satisfaction.

With an overall score of 1,000, or 100 per cent, Cambridge has beaten out its historic competitor, with Oxford coming in a close second.

The Complete University Guide’s rankings are always anticipated as informing and assisting University decisions for both sixth formers gearing up for applications in that summer of open days, as well as those applying through clearance post-A Levels. LSE places third, followed by St Andrews, with Durham climbing the rankings to take fifth place.

The statistics

The highest performing university holistically, The Complete University Guide’s comprehensive rankings reward Cambridge across the board. The University of Cambridge places consistently highly across different criteria, from standards of entry requirements surpassed only by St Andrews and Durham, to a high performance across subjects.

Clearly Cambridge continues to offer that fiscal power of investing in students that draws such a competition of applicants. Placing first for expenditure on academic services and boasting tied third place for student to staff ratio can be seen to evidence a maintained quality of education. Furthermore, the 2026 rankings place Cambridge University’s research quality as in tied second place with LSE, surpassed only by Imperial College London.

In these 2026 rankings, Cambridge has maintained top position in many subjects across humanities and sciences, placing top in economics, chemical engineering, history, law, physics, mathematics as well as retaining its position as the leading national provider of the course of medicine. This year’s ranking does see some movement in Cambridge’s position, seeing its computer science course beaten out by Oxford, and its politics course fall three places, but regardless sees its status across subjects continued .

But at what cost?

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This high academic performance could be seen to take a toll on the holistic experience of its student body: Despite topping rankings across employability and academic performance, Cambridge University places 42nd in student satisfaction, scoring 3.14 out of a possible five.

Indeed, the demands of such an academically rigorous institution might risk placing student mental health at the expense of exemplary performances, despite measures put in place to mitigate this problem, such as welfare officers and hardship grants. The findings of the Complete University Guide’s 2026 rankings seem to suggest that performance is still prioritised over wellbeing in a University that fosters a lifestyle of famously intense terms. That being said, the Complete University Guide’s 2026 rankings did grant Cambridge a 98.4 per cent continuation rate, just surpassing Oxford, indicating low dropout rates despite such intensity of study and an apparent negligence of student satisfaction.

Furthermore, given the historic wealth of the institution, is it surprising that Cambridge’s facilities haven’t felt as acutely the effect of the cost of living crisis? This is especially telling in a year where universities, Russel Group and otherwise, are feeling the effects of funding depletion, made manifest in cuts to staffed roles across the nation. As of July 2025, Birmingham City University is set to axe 340 new roles, and staff at the University of Nottingham is intending strike action over the scale of proposed redundancies, symptomatic of a crisis in higher education, a blow potentially absorbed and therefore not felt at Cambridge given its embedded wealth.

The Complete University Guide’s rankings are indeed only one of a number of respected, comprehensive orderings of the UK’s universities, and seem to denote for Cambridge what any student might already know: Exemplary quality of education, less than ideal levels of stress.

The University of Cambridge has been approached for comment. 

Featured Image Credits: Madeleine Wood