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University guide 2014: download the Guardian tables and see how the rankings have changed

The Guardian University guide and ranking for 2014 is out today. See what the data says and how it's changed since last year
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Cambridge University
Cambridge University has retained its top spot on the Guardian university league tables for the third year in a row. Photograph: Brian Harris/Alamy

Cambridge University has retained its top spot on the Guardian undergraduate university league table for the third year in a row. Oxford University and the London School of Economics (LSE) are in second and third place respectively, unchanged from the 2013 rankings.

St Andrews remains at fourth place, whilst UCL and Durham have each climbed one position taking them to fifth and sixth place respectively. Bath are up two places to seventh and Imperial climbs an impressive four places to return to the top ten.

A new addition to the top ten is Surrey university coming in at eighth beating Imperial at ninth and Warwick at tenth place. Richard Adams writes:


Surrey's rise above the likes of Imperial College and Warwick University – in ninth and tenth places respectively – is a remarkable effort for an institution whose origins go back to the Battersea Polytechnic Institute of 120 years ago. Some 56% of its student population are women, while more than 90% of its young applicants come from state schools

It's not such good news for Lancaster though, dropping to 11th. Exeter also failed to make the top ten after dropping two places to 12th.

So who have been the biggest climbers on this year's league table? If we don't take into account St Mark and St John, which dropped off the list last year and are now back in at 101st, Northampton have seen the biggest increase in their ranking.

Northampton have increased their position by an impressive 39 places bringing them up to 47th from 86th. Portsmouth are up 30 places to 48th. Liverpool John Moores, Swansea and Winchester have all also recorded significant changes in their positions since last year.

The chart above shows the universities with the biggest improvements in ranking and also those that have had the largest drop from the previous year's position.

Cardiff Met has fallen 39 places since last year, down from 66th to 105th. Sussex tumbles down from 27th place to 50th with the second biggest decrease since last year.

The University of the Arts London, Gloucestershire and Robert Gordon have also witnessed noticeable decreases in position since the 2013 rankings.

In other news, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama tops the specialist institutions rankings, followed by the Courtauld Institute.

Cambridge dominates the subject rankings, coming top in 14 out of 47 including medicine, veterinary science, biosciences, chemical engineering, maths, sociology and modern languages and linguistics. Oxford came top in eight subjects including economics, politics, psychology, chemistry and physics.

Although it's not exactly new that Oxbridge dominate the majority of the subject league tables, what is notable however is how their grip seems to be loosening on certain subjects. For example, once top for law, Oxford has been trumped by UCL which also comes top for civil engineering, archaeology, architecture, English and art and design.

Birmingham are ranked top for computer sciences and IT and LSE have overtaken Cambridge for Philosophy. Imperial have replaced Southampton as number one in mechanical engineering, Durham are ranked first for sport science beating Lougborough to the top spot and Sussex have jumped from 17th to first for social work.

The tables were compiled by independent consultancy firm Intelligent Metrix. It's based originally on information collected by Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the National Student Survey, published by Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce). The Guardian university guide is a ranking at undergraduate level only.

The Guardian undergraduate university guide can be explored below alongside information such as spend per student, student to staff ratio and institutions' value-added score.

Click on the downloadable spreadsheet to view the individual rankings by subject. We'd love to read your comments in the thread below.

If you want to pose any questions regarding the league table, the compiler of the tables, Matt Hiely-Rayner from Intelligent Metrix, will be online from 1-3pm today, to answer your questions and explain the lengthy process of consultation, categorisation and number-crunching that goes into putting these figures together each year.

• The Guardian university guide league tables were amended on 11 June 2013 to include scores inadvertently omitted from the first version. The downloadable data on this article has been corrected. You can read a full explanation of the changes here.
• The table on this article was amended on 11 June 2014 to correct the 2013 rankings for Imperial College and Surrey university. An earlier table had the 213 position for the universities as 3 and 2 respectively, which should have been 13 and 12.

Guardian university league table 2014

Click heading to sort table. Download this data

2013 Ranking
2014 Ranking
Institution
Average Teaching Score
Expenditure per student / 10
Student:staff ratio
Value added score/10
1 1 Cambridge 100.0 9.74 11.6 6.5
2 2 Oxford 96.2 9.67 11.1 7.3
3 3 London School of Economics 90.7 8.22 11.1 6.2
4 4 St Andrews 88.3 7.86 12.6 8.0
6 5 UCL 85.5 9.03 10.0 7.1
7 6 Durham 82.3 6.38 15.1 6.2
9 7 Bath 82.0 6.7 16.8 6.5
12 8 Surrey 81.1 7.8 16.6 6.7
13 9 Imperial College 80.6 8.28 11.7 6.7
'5 10 Warwick 80.2 8.56 14.3 5.8
'7 11 Lancaster 80.0 6.7 15.4 4.7
10 12 Exeter 78.1 6.03 18.7 6.7
19 13 Leicester 77.5 7.88 12.9 5.3
11 14 Loughborough 76.3 6.74 16.9 5.7
30 15 Birmingham 75.4 8.36 14.8 5.8
17 16 York 75.3 7.21 15.5 5.4
24 17 UEA 74.7 6.94 13.5 6.0
20 18 Heriot-Watt 74.5 6.97 18.3 5.5
15 19 Edinburgh 74.2 9.07 13.9 6.4
22 20 Kent 73.9 6.39 14.6 6.6
14 21 Glasgow 71.3 6.05 16.4 4.8
29 22 SOAS 71.1 7.03 11.8 7.2
18 23 Bristol 71.0 5.93 14.2 6.0
22 24 Southampton 70.9 6.49 13.7 5.9
16 25 Buckingham 70.6 3.75 11.4 1.9
34 26 Strathclyde 70.5 6.56 18.3 5.5
33 27 Newcastle 69.6 5.78 15.3 5.9
26 28 Nottingham 69.5 6.83 14.0 5.5
40 29 Cardiff 68.7 6.65 14.2 5.3
27 30 Aston 68.6 6.5 16.2 6.1
41 31 Manchester 68.1 7.88 14.8 4.6
31 32 King's College London 68.0 7.16 11.7 5.9
46 33 Coventry 67.0 3.91 14.6 7.1
37 34 Leeds 66.3 6.54 16.8 6.2
48 35 Oxford Brookes 66.2 5.89 17.3 6.8
36 36 Queen Mary 65.8 6.74 12.2 5.1
21 37 City 65.6 7.99 18.6 5.9
25 38 Reading 65.5 6.08 15.6 5.6
39 39 Royal Holloway 65.5 4.63 16.2 5.7
42 40 Sheffield 65.5 5.13 15.5 5.7
43 41 Dundee 65.0 5.92 14.4 5.2
48 42 Huddersfield 64.5 4.3 18.4 6.0
38 43 Aberdeen 64.2 5.2 16.4 6.0
44 44 Brunel 63.4 6.65 17.5 5.6
50 45 Keele 62.2 3.8 16.5 6.6
52 46 Chester 62.1 4.08 16.3 5.4
86 47 Northampton 62.0 5.86 20.0 7.1
78 48 Portsmouth 61.9 5.55 19.2 7.0
53 49 Queen's, Belfast 61.9 4.99 15.6 4.9
27 50 Sussex 61.4 4.81 17.1 6.3
65 51 Goldsmiths 61.3 3.16 19.2 6.6
55 52 Bournemouth 61.2 6.48 21.5 7.2
31 53 University of the Arts London 61.1 9.02 22.4 6.0
45 54 Liverpool 60.4 7.17 13.3 5.0
35 55 Robert Gordon 59.9 3.98 19.7 4.6
47 56 Lincoln 59.1 3.81 19.4 4.4
67 57 Stirling 59.1 4.72 18.3 4.5
55 58 Northumbria 59.0 5.13 17.7 5.0
61 59 Plymouth 58.1 5.95 16.8 6.0
88 60 Swansea 57.5 5.09 16.1 4.9
60 61 Birmingham City 57.3 5.56 21.0 5.9
69 62 Hull 57.1 4.46 19.8 4.4
50 63 Essex 56.8 5.2 16.4 4.1
54 64 UWE Bristol 56.5 3.22 21.7 7.8
57 65 Sunderland 56.3 6.94 17.0 5.7
87 66 Winchester 56.2 2.74 17.7 6.3
77 67 Anglia Ruskin 55.2 7.83 20.2 5.2
64 68 Brighton 54.9 4.5 19.0 5.8
98 69 Liverpool John Moores 54.6 4.22 21.6 6.9
75 70 Edge Hill 54.3 3.3 17.2 4.4
88 71 Greenwich 54.3 4.68 21.3 6.5
83 72 Sheffield Hallam 54.1 4.35 20.0 7.2
80 73 Nottingham Trent 53.7 4.61 20.0 5.2
63 74 Bangor 53.5 5.37 17.9 4.4
78 75 Teesside 53.4 5.03 20.1 4.8
57 76 Falmouth 53.1 5.85 23.9 5.0
61 77 Chichester 52.4 3.27 18.8 3.7
71 78 Bath Spa 51.8 3.92 21.8 6.0
70 79 Derby 51.2 4.79 18.8 4.7
59 80 Gloucestershire 50.9 5.08 22.3 6.8
73 81 Queen Margaret 50.8 2.79 20.5 6.9
76 82 Hertfordshire 50.6 4.2 19.5 7.0
85 83 De Montfort 50.3 3.23 20.2 5.6
68 84 West London 50.1 6.13 21.6 4.5
73 85 Edinburgh Napier 49.9 3.63 23.8 7.5
84 86 Salford 49.9 3.89 17.6 4.6
71 87 Central Lancashire 49.7 5.84 19.3 3.7
81 88 Aberystwyth 49.5 4.79 19.4 3.3
97 89 St Mary's UC, Twickenham 49.3 3.01 25.0 4.8
91 90 Bradford 49.2 5.6 19.4 3.6
101 91 Newman University 49.1 3.23 18.4 4.1
96 92 Staffordshire 48.6 5.73 20.3 3.8
108 93 Manchester Met 48.2 3.01 19.4 5.3
98 94 York St John 47.8 5.88 20.9 4.5
98 95 Worcester 47.7 4.48 23.6 6.5
91 96 Glasgow Caledonian 47.3 4.26 21.4 5.7
88 97 Ulster 46.3 3.79 18.6 4.9
114 98 UC Suffolk 46.2   20.7 2.5
93 99 Westminster 46.0 4.15 20.8 6.4
95 100 Kingston 44.9 4.38 20.4 4.3
na 101 St Mark and St John 44.8 2.14 20.5 3.6
'109 102 Roehampton 44.8 3.3 20.0 4.8
94 103 Middlesex 44.5 7.42 23.0 5.7
'105 104 Canterbury Christ Church 44.2 3.2 19.5 5.4
66 105 Cardiff Met 43.8 3.58 23.4 5.8
'107 106 West of Scotland 43.8 3.5 21.7 4.1
'112 107 Leeds Met 43.5 3.09 20.7 4.5
'106 108 Glyndŵr 43.3 3.52 23.2 4.1
'102 109 Cumbria 41.1 3.11 18.6 5.9
'103 110 Bedfordshire 40.3 5.58 23.3 4.6
'113 111 Leeds Trinity 40.2 2 23.3 1.8
'117 112 Southampton Solent 40.2 3.5 20.5 4.1
'104 113 London South Bank 39.4 3.91 23.7 4.1
'119 114 Abertay Dundee 34.5 1.84 24.0 5.0
'120 115 Bolton 33.1 3.4 20.6 3.2
'118 116 London Met 31.7 2.09 21.7 4.9
'115 117 East London 31.2 3.49 24.8 4.4
'110 118 Trinity Saint David 31.2 4.05 21.3 2.0
'116 119 Bucks New University 30.1 3.85 24.1 2.3

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