Sunday Times University Ranking 2025: This London university is officially better than Oxford and Cambridge

It’s officially back to school season and whether you’re simply looking for some reassurance that you made the right choice before you plunge into £30k of debt, or are just starting to mull over your options, the Sunday Times has released its list of the top universities in the UK. 

Judging the quality of teaching and research, student satisfaction rates and graduate prospects, Sunday Times managed to find an answer to the question grads are alway asking: What’s the best university? And as if us lot in the capital didn’t already have enough to gloat about, it turns out that the country’s finest uni is right here in London. 

Scoring highly across graduate prospects, teaching and research quality, the London School of Economics (LSE) scooped first place in this year’s Sunday Times guide, a few leaps up from its fourth-place finish last year. 

Sure, university is a laugh, with plenty of parties and microwavable meals, but it’s a time in life that marks the start of adulthood without actually having to grow up. But the purpose of it is to help us get a job after all, and with 92.5 per cent of LSE students in high-skilled full-time jobs or further study only 15 months after graduating, it’s easy to understand why it was crowned the best.

And LSE wasn’t the only London university to nab a spot near the top of the Sunday Times ranking. It’s joined by neighbours Imperial College London and University College London, which also made it into the top 10.

Coming in at third place was St Andrews, with the Scottish university managing to knock Oxford and Cambridge down to third and fourth – the lowest they’ve ranked in the 31-year history of the Sunday Times’ league. It’s the first time Cambridge has failed to get into the top three, if anyone has a tiny violin handy. 

The saying that there’s no money in the arts may have been drilled in a little too hard, with the Sunday Times putting this year’s Oxbridge results down to the growing popularity of STEM subjects pursued by students looking for a career that will guarantee a job, and money.

The only other university to beat LSE’s high job prospect was Imperial College London, where grads on the computer science degree can expect to earn £65,000 a year after leaving. 

The Sunday Times isn’t the only paper to have published its university guide in recent weeks. The Guardian’s guide also featured London unis, with LSE, Imperial and UCL coming in the top 10. The Daily Mail, by contrast named Imperial the best uni in the country in its guide to the UK’s best and worst universities, putting LSE fourth. 

With 18 Nobel prizewinners making up part of its notable alumni, and one of the few universities not to offer places through clearing, LSE has safely asserted itself as a prestigious fave for prospective students. You can find out more on the Sunday Times website here.

Time Out’s guide to university

Need help picking a university or simply looking to reminisce on your own time there? We’ve got you covered. These are the universities with highest-paid graduates, but if money can’t buy you happiness, we’ve also got a list of the happiest universities according to students. And it’s not just London that’s good at higher education: UK universities are some of the best in the world.

Here are the best cities in the UK for students.

Plus: Pints in the UK could be getting smaller.

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