Beyond Oxford and Cambridge, I have heard of the following: the University of London, University of Surrey, University of Sussex, University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and Cardiff University. Probably forgotten some others, as well.
What I’m wondering, though, is after Oxford and Cambridge, which universities considered to be next in line – regarding both reputation and actual academics (as well as that can be ascertained)?
Imperial College London; maybe LSE?
It can be argued over endlessly but the Russell Groupsee themselves as the top of the tree:
University of Birmingham
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
Cardiff University
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
Imperial College London
King’s College London
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
London School of Economics & Political Science
University of Manchester
Newcastle University
University of Nottingham
Queen’s University Belfast
University of Oxford
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University College London
University of Warwick
Note that London is made up of a number of colleges a number of which are in the top flight, as noted LSE, Imperial, etc, but others are not.
The next in line would probably be St Andrews. I won’t say it’s actually any better than London, Edinburgh etc., but it is regarded as prestigious. My guess would be that this reputation is based on its age.
[Blackadder thinks Nurse Mary is a German spy]
Captain Blackadder: *And then the final, irrefutable proof. Remember, you mentioned a clever boyfriend… *
Nurse Mary: *Yes. *
Captain Blackadder: *I then leapt on the opportunity to test you. I asked if he’d been to one of the great universities, Oxford, Cambridge, or Hull. *
Nurse Mary: *Well? *
Captain Blackadder: *You failed to spot that only two of those are great Universities. *
Nurse Mary: *Swine! *
General Melchett: *That’s right! Oxford’s a complete dump! *
As noted, the Russell Group of 20 Universities are regarded as the elite.
But from “man in the street” perspective, I would suggest the following:
Bristol Uni has the highest proportion of private school pupils, plus the highest application/places ratio.
**Imperial College **is regarded as the leading Science / Engineering university
Durham Uni is also quite upper crust (arranged in a collegiate system like Oxbridge) and is popular with students from private schools
St Andrews is old, and attracted Prince William recently.
Missed the edit!
Should have added that the Russell Group does not line up with the Times list of the top 100 universitieswhich takes a range of factors into account. Top 20:
1 Oxford
2 Cambridge
3 Imperial College
4 London School of Economics
5 St Andrews
6 Warwick
7 University College London
8 Durham
9 York
10 Bristol
11 King’s College London
12 Loughborough
13 Exeter
14 Leicester
15 Bath
16 Nottingham
=16 Southampton
18 Edinburgh
19 Lancaster
20 Newcastle
=20 Glasgow
Loads of different ways of arranging British universities here:
Totally different orders, depending on which one you choose 
There is less emphasis generally on exact numerical rankings for universities in the UK as compared to the US. Different universities in the top flight (the Russell group as mentioned) tend to attract different top students, depending on the individual strong areas of the university (Warwick for maths, say).
I’d agree that St Andrews, Edinburgh, LSE and Durham have a lot of ‘reputation’ going for them. Durham and Exeter are considered here (Oxon. ;)) to be full of ‘Oxbridge rejects’ but I’m not sure how accurate that impression is.
At Cornell, though, pretty much everyone I knew (in the Arts college anyway), myself cheerfully included, were Harvard-Yale-Princeton rejects. Reports from Brown indicated something similar. I don’t know what this says about the different systems…
It really depends on the subject area. Imperial College, the London School of Economics and SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), all part of the University of London, have prominence in their own fields. In music, Oxford and Cambridge don’t stand out above (for example) York, Goldsmiths or Manchester. There’ll be similar situation in other specialities, too.
Yeah. I was thinking in terms of how, in the US, most people can easily spit out that Harvard, Yale, & Princeton are the top. After that, most folks could probably rattle off some other Ivy league schools, with Stanford and Duke being at about that reputational level.
Beyond that, in the US, it’s a free-for-all. Many, many schools have good reps, though – especially if you consider schools that have great reps in specific fields. And of course, in real life, you can get a rock-solid education at hundreds of universities & colleges – and it stands to reason the same is true in the UK.
I was thinking that UK universities might fall into reputational tiers in much the same way. I definitely was aware that it wouldn’t be a strict 1-2-3-4 system, of course.
There certainly are reputational tiers, but they tend to represent prejudices and outdated views as much as they really inform. There’s the Russell Group already mentioned, and ‘red brick universities’. ‘New universities’ used to be a way to refer to those founded in the 1950s and 60s, and includes places such as York, Surrey, UEA, Warrick and Sussex. Now, the term generally gets used to mean the post-1992 generation of institutions, which still sometimes get derided as a block, through snobbery at their origins as much as through reasonable assessment.
One way of looking at it is “where did your leaders go to school” - ie. your chances of becoming POTUS decrease massively if you didn’t go to Harvard or Yale at some point.
By that standard, I think the next school down is the LSE, but again, that’s purely by reputation.
It depends on the subject area. Edinburgh stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to e.g. computer science and AI. The closest competitor to Edinburgh is Cambridge for computer science. Edinburgh also has a good reputation in the biomedical fields, with strong medical and veterinary medicine schools.
But, don’t trust me, I’m an Edinburgh alumnus 
This. And bearing in mind that since 1992 a further number of previous Colleges of HE have now also become university colleges or universities.
Since the move to mass higher education (the Government is still striving for a target of 50% of all school-leavers being in HE) the whole tier system has become a lot more complex. This is partly in terms of subject, as noted above, but also in terms of what each individual student wants to get from the experience. Naturally, if you want to go into law, for example, you might want to go to a well-known uni for teaching law - but equally you might want to go to a (previously) mid-range university like Oxford Brookes to get a wider grounding in economics and then on to a law school.
Similarly, some of the much newer universities specialise in widening participation - that is encouraging those less well-off or with experience but no academic background to embark upon an HE qualification. These also tend to deliver module-based provision, rather than linear courses with final exams, unlike many of the Russell Group - which in turn allows breadth of study rather than depth.
In addition, there is always the question of how you measure ‘prestigious’ - it is reputation to a great extent, but the measures are changing. The National Student Survey has run for 3 years now, and is starting to reveal some interesting factors that demonstrate satisfaction with the HE experience - in turn these threaten the established regime (although arguments about whether students should be happy with a learning experience go on…!?).
A short answer then, would be that it just depends on what you’re looking for. My take (as a manager of one of those post-92 universities and therefore biased) is that unless you want to work in a field that explicitly states that they are looking for graduates from x (some engineering firms, for instance), then the choice is yours. As far as bragging rights go, Oxford or Cambridge pretty much stand alone, as as soon as you start work all the undergraduate work becomes relatively irrelevant and the transferable skills that have been learnt (analytical, critical or basic practical skills) become all the more important.
It’s worth noting that Imperial College pulled out of the University of Londonlast year, due to a drop in the independent assessments of UL. In future it will issue its own degrees just as Imperial College. I graduated this year and had a choice of whether to have UL or Imperial on the certificate.
That’s what I was about to ask. Since students in the UK, from what I’m told and like in (most of or all of) Continental Europe have to choose the subject before signing up for classes, it seems perfectly possible that, like in Spain, in the UK a University could be #1 for a given subject and last-choice for another.
Thanks, you answered my question before I even asked it!
To give an extreme example, Imperial College is home of the Royal School of Mines. If you wanna study digging up of minerals to an advanced level, they’re probably your #1 choice, whereas City University is big on Aeronautical Engineering and has transonic wind tunnels and stuff.