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I will be applying to study mathematics in university soon, and in order to choose which universities I should apply to I am looking at university rankings among other factors.

However, many of the university rankings that I have looked at often differ significantly, eg placing a university 10th in the world in one website and placing it 30th in the world in another website.

Is there a ranking of universities that I can rely on and that is widely accepted by academics? I am particularly interested in university rankings for the UK, as that's where I live and so I'll most likely study there.

Thank you for your help.

henning
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A-Level Student
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    What are you looking for specifically in a mathematical education? "Rank" might not be a terribly useful heuristic to find institutions that cater to your interests and needs. For example, is it really important how many Fields medal or Nobel prize winners an institution has hosted? – henning Jun 29 '21 at 12:04
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    What would "official" even mean? Published by the UN? – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 12:06
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    As per @Buffy's comment and the answer below, I'm going to replace "official" by "widely recognized", although that invites the question "by whom". – henning Jun 29 '21 at 12:31
  • You will just need to deal with the complexity. And FWIW, that is what mathematicians do, generally speaking. – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 12:37
  • @henning, unfortunately, now it reads like a shopping question. – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 12:38
  • @Buffy opinion-based, to an extent, as well. But not really. An answer could list a few well-known examples and conclude that none is sufficiently recognized. OP is free to roll back, but then the question would be unclear/lack details. – henning Jun 29 '21 at 12:54
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    I could give useful advice to the OP, but it wouldn't qualify as an answer to the question. Alas. Tooooo many people in similar situations are looking for exactly the wrong thing. – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 12:55
  • You could look at the TEF (teaching excellence framework) scores of the universities you're interested in. As an undergraduate, you should decide based on quality of teaching, not research (e.g. how many Nobel prizes the uni has, as pointed out correctly by @henning). – astronat supports the strike Jun 29 '21 at 14:08
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    The problem with all university rankings is that a concept such as 'quality of education' is almost impossible to define and measure quantitatively. Instead, rankings are based on things that 'ought to' correlate with quality (e.g. student satisfaction, measured by surveys). However, this just means that universities focus on improving their student satisfaction scores (free ice cream! bouncy castle!) and not on making their education programme more rigorous (which might actually be detrimental, as it might be seen as 'harder' and 'less fun')... – avid Jun 29 '21 at 17:51
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    Ultimately what matters is finding the place that's best for you. That isn't just about the course, but also about atmosphere, location, size of university/city, etc, and your own personality. Thanks to Covid, most places are now running virtual open days and the like - exploit this to learn as much as you can about different courses and places, and see what appeals. – avid Jun 29 '21 at 17:57
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    A question about what you can do to secure a slot in a "great" university in UK, given any particular circumstances, would be on topic here and probably give you more useful feedback. – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 19:35
  • @Buffy Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought undergrad admissions is one of the things specifically listed as 'out of scope'? – avid Jun 29 '21 at 20:09
  • @avid, ah, yes. I was thinking of a higher level, I guess. Thanks. – Buffy Jun 29 '21 at 20:18

2 Answers2

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There's no "official" rankings because who would have the authority to decide on what metrics make a university the "best"?

Only a body that was appointed by universities themselves would have this authority and given that each university has a different focus, getting them to agree on a set of universal metrics to be assessed against would be nigh impossible.

That being said, the closest thing you'll get to an "official" ranking is probably The World University Rankings collated by The Times. This is done in conjunction with Elsevier which gives it some semblance of authenticity.

A bit of advice for you specifically: university rankings don't really matter. I turned down a place at Cambridge to study part-time at Aston Uni because I preferred the lab-based approach that Aston takes to engineering degrees and I wanted to jump straight into industry. I don't regret this and I believe this hands-on experience has been far, far more useful in the long-term now I'm in industry. Furthermore, no hiring manager cares what university you went to. The days of "we only hire from Russel Group Universities" are long, long gone.

Choose your university based on where you'll be happiest and where you think the teaching style aligns most closely with your long-term goals. I'd only be concerned about ranking if they're far, far down at the wrong end. In which case look into why that's the case and decide if that matters to you.

ScottishTapWater
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    And, for graduate work, the purported ranking of an entire institution is pretty meaningless. – Jon Custer Jun 29 '21 at 12:55
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    +1, but in my opinion the Elsevier association makes them less credible rather than more. – academic Jun 29 '21 at 12:56
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    @academic Could you explain the reasoning behind that? – ScottishTapWater Jun 29 '21 at 14:19
  • @Persistence Elsevier (along with many other academic publishing houses) have a complicated ethical relationship with actual academics, since the publishing model effectively uses "free" labour (actually paid for out of research grants) to fulfil most of the steps to produce peer reviewed articles, while also charging readers, authors or both. They do provide real services and shouldn't be confused with unambiguous scam artists, but Elsevier in particular have many detractors to the point of boycott https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion--boycotting-elsevier-is-not-enough-66617 – origimbo Jun 29 '21 at 19:30
  • https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54336/status-of-elsevier-boycott http://thecostofknowledge.com/ – Anonymous Physicist Jun 30 '21 at 01:19
  • @origimbo, I can't argue with that. In the day and age of the internet, knowledge should be open by default. That being said, I'd think that they're still about as well placed as it's possible to be to help with this stuff – ScottishTapWater Jun 30 '21 at 08:19
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There are three widely-followed world university rankings: the THE, the QS, and the ARWU. You'll find discrepancies between them of course, but given they have different methodologies, it's not surprising. Make sure you know what you're looking for and what's important to you before using them. For example, the ARWU relies heavily on Nobel Laureates & Fields Medallists as staff or alumni. If you don't care about the natural sciences or mathematics, then these things are irrelevant, and the ARWU might be less applicable to you.

I am not as familiar with regional rankings, but my understanding is that the US News and World Report rankings is widely followed within the US, while in the UK, there are another three regional rankings (The Complete University Guide, The Guardian, and The Times/The Sunday Times). Once again they use different methodologies and so reach different results. To quote:

The considerable disparity in rankings has been attributed to the different methodology and purpose of global university rankings ... International university rankings primarily use criteria such as academic and employer surveys, the number of citations per faculty, the proportion of international staff and students and faculty and alumni prize winners ... The national rankings, on the other hand, give most weighting to the undergraduate student experience, taking account of teaching quality and learning resources, together with the quality of a university's intake, employment prospects, research quality and drop-out rates.

Hopefully you can see the difficulty in ranking universities, and why different people look at different rankings. You'll have to decide what is and isn't important to you.

Allure
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