The Sutton Trust, an educational charity has produced a list of 13 universities identified as those with the highest average rankings in surveys published by The Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and Financial Times in 2000.

The Sutton Trust believe that these top universities should do more to widen access and increase their state school intake.

* University of Birmingham
* University of Bristol
* University of Cambridge
* Durham University
* University of Edinburgh
* Imperial College London
* London School of Economics
* University of Nottingham
* University of Oxford
* University of St Andrews
* University College London
* University of Warwick
* University of York

On top of this, the THES - QS World University Rankings list of the ‘World’s top 200 Universities’ in 2006, placed Glasgow, Manchester and King’s College London, among, and in some cases higher, than the names mentioned above.

It should be noted that inclusion in the overall top ten does not indicate excellence in any particular field, and some universities with a very good reputation for specific subjects (especially vocational subjects) never enter the overall top ten.

League Tables, which usually focus on the full-time undergraduate student experience, commonly omit reference to the Open University and Birkbeck, University of London both of which specialise in teaching part-time students. These universities, however, often make a strong showing in specialist league tables looking at research, teaching quality, and student satisfaction (for example, Birkbeck was ranked 13th in the last Research Assessment Exercise - 2001 - by The Guardian, and the Open University was ranked first, and Birkbeck fifth in the 2006 Student Satisfaction survey according to the BBC).

Traditionally the post-1992 universities have done less well in the University rankings. However, in recent years some of the new universities have steadily moved up the league tables and can now sometimes be found in the top half of all universities. The Guardian 2004 tables were especially favourable to some post-1992 universities, Middlesex was ranked 19th overall, and Oxford Brookes was ranked 26th. In the most recent tables, published in 2007, the following Universities were ranked in the top fifty by one or another table: the University of Plymouth,Robert Gordon University, Glasgow Caledonian University, Bournemouth University, Oxford Brookes University.

[VIA Wikipedia.com] suttontrust.com

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