The top university for 2025 is the London School of Economics (LSE), which received the highest overall score across all measuring factors. LSE has risen 3 spaces in the ranking since last year to claim the top spot, pushing St. Andrews into second place.
Oxford and Cambridge remain firmly in third and fourth position, and Durham University has snuck into 5th place, ranking the highest in the North and Northeast of England. Durham also came runner-up for ‘University of the Year for Graduate Employment’, with the first place going to Imperial College in London.
Newcastle University ranked 30th place, with scores of 79.2% for teaching quality, 77.3% for student experience, 82.4% for graduate prospects and 83.6% for firsts and 2:1s. Also in the North East, Northumbria University won 'Modern University of the Year', in recognition of its research performance.
The Good University Guide is a 96-page supplement released annually by The Sunday Times. It provides definitive rankings of 131 universities in the UK, acting as 'the most comprehensive overview of higher education in the UK'.
The guide ranks Universities based on several factors including graduate employment levels, teaching quality, student experience and even sustainability on campus, measured through unbiased data collection methods.
Helen Davies, the editor of the Time and Sunday Times Good University Guide, said: 'This year we have tweaked our methodology to keep up with contemporary concerns around climate change and careers and have added in a sustainability metric, teaming up with People & Planet, and boosted the weighting of graduate prospects.'
The top university by employers is the University of Birmingham. The top graduate employers based on salary are White & Case, Allen & Overy, Freshfields, Latham Watkins and Aldi.
The supplement also has a useful section on ‘Everything you need to know about applying’ which advises prospective students on seeking out the perfect degree and the application process. This segment focused on providing the best advice to potential students, giving them tips on how to start looking at possible Universities, choosing the right degree, creating a personal application and preparing for an interview.
A segment on student finances asked the question of whether students can live on £35 a week, finding that in 2023 'parents contributed an average of £56.75 a week compared with £39.45 in the previous year.' This article, by Jayne Dowle, was aimed at parents of prospective parents who might be concerned about the financial side of university life, ensuring them that £35 can be enough for an entire weekly food shop for their children.
Other segments within the supplement highlighted the changing attitudes towards mental health and neurodiversity within universities.
A stand-out article within the 96-page supplement was titled 'Looking Back, I have Always Felt so Different- Now it Makes Sense,' shedding light on neurodiversity diagnoses (like ADHD and Autism) on campus. The author, Caroline Scott, states that 'last year more than 200 students approached NDAS for an assessment,' showing the extent of the students who struggle with seeking a diagnosis at university.
Research from Dr Jane Sedgwick-Muller, who set up the first ADHD service for students at LSE, on the impact of ADHD in higher education, showed that the best-performing students had one-to-one support on campus.
Overall, the 2025 Good University Guide is a comprehensive and useful guide to university life, providing facts and figures about most universities across the UK, advice for prospective and applying students as well as the parents of said students.
Though Newcastle is not one of the highest-ranking universities this year, it still ranked well in all of the respective categories, sitting firmly within the top 50 universities in the country.
All information from this article has been taken from The Times & The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025.