I originally posted this some time back and elsewhere as a reminder for myself and as an aid to other parents / students. I present it here, in a slightly edited format but in principle the ethos of the original remains:

I never went through trying to pick a Universitymyself as I had grand plans to join the RAF at 16 as an apprentice electronics technician. I was amply qualified, I sailed through their tests but (as I later found out from a neighbour) I was only offered a job as a truck driver so that they could fulfil their quotas.

Anyway – enough of me. My eldest was in his final year at school and has determined what he wants to do as a degree. However he hadn’t a clue and nobody seemed to be providing that clue as to how one picks a university. After several fruitless attempts to get some help we sat down to surf a bit and found some excellent resources. In fact and as the title suggests there are precisely 3 of them and I share them now so as to help other year 13 (aka upper sixth) students or their parents.

1. Unistats – This was teh “Teaching Quality Initiative originally but it’s morphed into Unistats now. Search by subject, university, compare, etc
2. The Alternative Guide to British Universities – as it says on the cover but from the students perspective. This guide is produced by Virgin and you may need to search for a different year as this one links to 2010.
3. The Guardian University League Tables – as with Unistats – The Guardian have long produced an annual guide to Universities but also make it available online.

There are other resources, including other newpapers such as The Times but I didn’t like the way they laid out their results and this can lead to some confusion. It is also at odds with what other organisations have determined and furthermore it is at odds with those universities I have personally visited with my eldest.

There is a predeliction to keeping Oxford and Cambridge at the top of the rankings but without justifying why. The other guides don’t fall in to such short comings (to my eyes anyway) and note well, this is not educational jealousy as my son was perfectly capable of attending Oxford. To that end we went along to the appropriate Open Day and our feelings on the matter will remain private, but suffice to say it is not the place it pretends to be. Finally, and less personal is the fact that Oxford and Cambridge instruct their students to not reply to these annual surveys and instead the results are based on their own internal surveys – not at all suspicious!

Anyway, I hope these few links help you as they have helped my son and I.