I never went through this myself 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 is 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 I sat down with him and we went web surfing and we 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. Teaching Quality Initiative - search by subject, university, compare, etc
2. The Virgin 2008 Alternative Guide to British Universities - as it says on the cover but from the students perspective.
3. The Guardian University League Tables - as with the TQI

There are other resources, including other newpapers such as The Times but I don’t like the way they’ve 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 is 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 insteadthe 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.

Tags: university, tqi, times, education, oxford, cambridge