Hoping for some help from the UK

[Tim Regan]

Hi Jennifer,

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter Jennifer wrote:
> I am going to be a high school senior next year and am interested 
in 
> going to school in the UK.  I am hitting a lot of brick walls when 
it 
> comes to researching what are the best schools there because any 
site 
> I find seems to only want to concentrate on the US.  So I was 
hoping 
> that someone from the UK could tell me what some of the top 
> universities are over there (besides the obvious two...Cambridge 
and 
> Oxford).  I am interested in humanities and social studies mostly -
- 
> English, history, or political science.

The Guardian does a table of who the best universities in the UK 
are. It's here
<http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/unitable/0,,-4668575,00.html>

It ranks the top 10 UK universities as
1. Cambridge   
2. Oxford    
3. London School of Economics 
4. School of Oriental &African Studies
5. University College London
6. York
7. Imperial College
8. Nottingham 
9. Warwick
10. King's College London

You can also view subject by subject here
<http://education.guardian.co.uk/universityguide>

The top five for English are
1. Cambridge 
2. Nottingham 
3. University College London 
4. Glasgow  
5. Oxford

The top five for history are 
1. Cambridge
2. London School of Economics
3. King's College London  
4. University College London  
5. Royal Holloway and Bedford New College  
(wow – that's four London colleges in the top five and no Oxford!) 

They don't have a table for politics that I can find. But do try 
digging around the site. 

Although being good at research and being good at teaching are not 
the same thing, a university department's research standing is one 
measure of how good it is. These are `measured' and available 
online. 5 means great, 1 means awful. To check the 2001 results go 
to 
<http://education.guardian.co.uk/researchratings/> 
and pick a subject. For example English is here 
<http://education.guardian.co.uk/researchratings/table/0,11229,-
4319369,00.html> 
It also includes a column listing what percentage of the lecturers 
were entered into the review. A means 95 – 100%. It's 2001 data 
though.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.