guardian

The latest UK university rankings were revealed this week, placing Cambridge in top spot for the second year running. Arch rival Oxford was placed second in the Guardian University Guide 2013 league table, whilst St Andrews in Scotland took third place.

The annual rankings are based on the quality of universities in a variety of different categories for full-time undergraduate students. The categories include:

• How much they spend per student
• Student to staff ratio
• Career prospects of graduates
• The ‘value-added' score between first and final year students
• Final year student satisfaction (based on results from the National Student Survey)

The Big Winners and Losers

Here is the full top ten universities for this year, with last year's position in brackets:

The Guardian newspaper today released its 2012 UK university league tables, placing Cambridge in top spot for the first time in six years.

Cambridge (pictured above) pipped Oxford to first place, with St. Andrews, LSE and UCL making up the rest of the top five. The big movers of the table were Middlesex which climbed 37 places to 75th since last year, and Birmingham City University which fell from 66th to 90th.

The Guardian’s table is based on data only for full-time undergraduate students, and the universities are ranked according to how much they spend per student, their student/staff ratio, the employability of their graduates, what grades applicants need, a value-added score and student satisfaction.

Below you can see the top 30 in the league table.