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Warwick is top university in the Midlands

The University of Warwick is celebrating a decade as the top university in the Midlands as revealed by The Sunday Times University Guide.

 The 2007 guide, published with The Sunday Times this Sunday, September 23, names the Coventry-based institution as its top university in the region for the tenth successive year.

 Top in the Midlands

(last year’s Midlands ranking in brackets)

Rank

 

Sunday Times

 UK rank

2007

Sunday Times

 UK rank

2006

% satisfied

Students

Peer

rank

Head

rank

1 (1)

Warwick

7

6

73.8

4

16

2 (3)

Loughborough

13

17

82.6

37=

21

3 (2)

Nottingham

15

12

71.7

16

15

4 (4)

Leicester

19=

24

82.3

30=

52=

5 (5)

Birmingham

23

28

74.7

24

9

6 (6)

Aston

32

33

75.5

54

19

7 (-)

Harper Adams University College

44=

n/a

83.1

90

11

8 (7)

Keele

48

41

73.1

60=

64=

9 (8)

Nottingham Trent

58

58

70.1

72=

57=

10 (10)

Staffordshire

79

81

74.8

91=

102=

11 (11)

Coventry

83

87=

74.6

93

74=

12 (12)

De Montfort

87

90

72.8

70=

68=

13 (9)

UCE Birmingham

89=

77

69.5

95=

74=

14 (14)

Worcester

92=

103

75.1

104=

98=

15 (13)

Northampton

99=

101

74.8

116=

47=

16 (16)

Lincoln

103

108=

72.5

116=

104=

17 (17)

Wolverhampton

114

116

70.7

102

118

18 (15)

Derby

116

105

71.2

101

88=

 

 The Sunday Times said: "Warwick students took part in the national student survey for the first time this year after boycotting the first two surveys in 2005 and 2006 and promptly returned a solid satisfaction score with 73.8%, helping to put the university in seventh place nationally in The Sunday Times rankings.

"Warwick’s research record is bettered only by Oxford and Cambridge among multifaculty universities, a result backed up by Warwick’s fourth place in an exclusive peer assessment survey of university heads of department. Three out of four students attain graduate level jobs, with average starting salaries above £21,500, putting them among the best paid graduates in the UK.

 "Established 42 years ago, Warwick is one of the finest universities in the country, building its reputation in an astonishingly short time. Its worldwide profile helps recruit a quarter of its students from abroad, pushing competition to about nine applications per place"

 Richard Fern, spokesperson for the University of Warwick added: “This is great news for the University which announced its new corporate strategy last week.

 “Warwick plans, not only to be a leader amongst British Universities, but also, by 2015 to be a top-50 university in world-wide league tables.”

 The Sunday Times University Guide 2007 provides students and their parents with an invaluable first reference point on the path to finding a university place. It contains full profiles of all universities and the leading colleges of higher education. The league table is drawn up from criteria including student satisfaction, teaching and research quality, ratings from head teachers’ and academic peer review, entrance qualifications held by new students, degree results achieved, student/staff ratios, graduate unemployment levels and university dropout rates.

 
Ends

 For further information contact

 Richard Fern

Press Officer

University of Warwick

07876 217740

r.w.fern@warwick.ac.uk

 

IF USING THIS INFORMATION PLEASE CREDIT THE SUNDAY TIMES

 For further information, please contact Sophie Bickford on 07793 053 883. Ian Coxon, editor of The Sunday Times University Guide, and Alastair McCall, its author, are available for interview.


Editors’ Notes

The Sunday Times University Guide 2007 was compiled using data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa), the National Student Survey, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the national funding councils, head teachers, peers and the 123 institutions themselves. Each university and college is ranked according to the total mark it achieved across nine distinct areas: student satisfaction; teaching excellence; head teachers and peer assessments; research quality; A/AS-level (or Higher/Advanced Higher) grades achieved by entrants; graduate employment and proportion of students entering graduate level jobs; percentage of first and 2:1 degrees awarded; student/staff ratios; and dropout rates.

 

Head teachers at more than 1,000 leading state and independent secondary schools were asked to identify the highest-quality undergraduate provision in 30 subjects. The number of subject citations received at each institution was expressed as a percentage of the maximum number it was possible to achieve had every head cited a given university in every subject for which it offered a course. The ranking in the table above is derived from this percentage.

 

More than 2,200 academics were contacted for The Sunday Times peer assessment survey. They were asked to rate departments in their subject field at other universities on a five-point scale for the quality of their undergraduate provision. The ranking shown above is based on an institution’s overall score expressed as a percentage of the maximum score possible had all academics given every department the highest possible rating.