- All league tables are eligible for inclusion provided they have multiple, quantitative, measures. There should be no evidence of confirmation bias, and the methodology should be sound. If multiple subjective criteria are used then the league table will not be included.
- The ranking will be determined by giving a 50:50 weighting to international and domestic (UK based) league tables, the justification for this is that they usually paint different pictures due to significantly different methodology, thus giving an incentive to combine the tables in this way.
- League tables that only emphasize one aspect of the quality of a university (such as research) will be given half the weighting of a table that emphasizes multiple qualities. Note a league table must still have multiple different measures of this one aspect to qualify.
- The most up to data data possible is used, league tables that are more than 3 years out of data will not qualify.
- The emphasis is on high ranking universities, consequently the full table will not be released, due to the implementation of a cap further down for practical reasons.
- The scores are quantitative and rounded to the nearest 1%. Any two universities within a percent of each other are assigned equal ranking. The highest ranking university will receive a perfect score.
The current rankings (April 11th 2014), use 9 different league tables (see below table) and are as follows:
| Position | University | Score (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cambridge | 100 |
| 2 | Oxford | 97 |
| =3 | UCL | 86 |
| =3 | ICL | 86 |
| 5 | LSE | 72 |
| 6 | Durham | 65 |
| 7 | St. Andrews | 64 |
| 8 | Warwick | 61 |
| 9 | Edinburgh | 59 |
| 10 | Bristol | 58 |
Sources: Times/Sunday Times, Complete university guide, Guardian, THES, QS, Shanghai rankings, Webometrics, CWTS, URAP
