Oxford drops down to second place in new university league table

Oxford has dropped down to second place in the new Complete University Guide 2024 league table, losing its crown of first place for the last two years to Cambridge.

After Oxford, London School of Economics came third, followed by St Andrews and Bath rounding out the top five best universities in the UK.

The Complete University Guide scores 130 UK unis on various metrics, then giving them an overall score. Oxford achieved 98 per cent overall (compared to Cambridge’s perfect score of 100), with 97 for entry standards, 87 for research quality and 90 for graduate prospects.

This puts Oxford at sixth in the country for both entry standards and research quality, and fifth for graduate prospects – how successful grads are after leaving university. Imperial College London came in first place for this, followed by Cambridge.

One of the key areas, student satisfaction, was not recorded at either Oxford or Cambridge universities.

Oxford ranked in the top 10 in the country for a huge 39 subjects, including being first in the UK for African and Middle Eastern studies, classics, biomedical sciences, philosophy, anthropology, politics, history, English, law, business, Asian studies, and art and design.

Oxford may not have beat Cambridge this time, but there’s one university we can always be sure to beat. Nearby Oxford Brookes lived up to its unofficial “motto” of Brookes not books, dropping one place since last year and coming at 46th in the country.

You can see the full Complete University Guide 2024 league table, and everything about how Oxford scored, here. 

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