Named and shamed: These are officially the whitest Russell Group universities in 2024

On average, Russell Group universities are 65 per cent white. But whilst this figure has slightly decreased from 77 per cent in the last five years, it’s still extremely high.

New figures released by UCAS in its 2023 end-of-cycle data tell us which Russell Group university is the least diverse and admits the highest number of white students.

Officially the whitest Russell Group university is Queen’s University Belfast which has a staggering 93.23 percentage of white students. This means that out of 4,210 new students accepted into the university, a huge 3,925 of them are white.

Queen’s Belfast is followed by The University of York, where 83.26 per cent of students are white. York accepted 4,540 new students in 2023 and only 760 were from an ethnic minority background.

But topping the list for the most diverse universities with the lowest percentage of white students are all the London universities. Queen Mary University of London is the least white university with only 22.72 per cent of accepted students being of white ethnicity.

QMUL is closely followed by King’s College London where 33.88 per cent or 1,345 of 3,970 students are white.

So these are the Russell Group universities ranked by just how white they are:

23. King’s College London – 33.88 per cent

22. Imperial College London  – 34.55 per cent

21. University College London – 38.2 per cent

20. London School of Economics – 39.7 per cent

19. The University of Warwick – 55.5 per cent

18. The University of Birmingham – 57.83 per cent

17. The University of Manchester – 60.33 per cent

16. The University of Nottingham – 63.2 per cent

15. The University of Cambridge – 64.49 per cent

14. The University of Southampton – 69.12 per cent

13. The University of Oxford – 69.31 per cent

12. The University of Leeds – 72.08 per cent

11. The University of Bristol – 75.49 per cent

10. The University of Sheffield – 76.6 per cent

9. The University of Liverpool – 77.28 per cent

8. Cardiff University – 77.64 per cent

7. The University of Edinburgh – 81.66 per cent

6. The University of Exeter – 82.29 per cent

5. Newcastle University – 82.75 per cent

4. The University of Glasgow – 82.77 per cent

3. Durham University – 82.79 per cent

2. The University of York – 83.26 per cent

1. Queen’s University Belfast – 93.23 per cent

For more uni stories like this ranking of the whitest Russell Group universities follow @TheTab_ on Instagram. 

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