The University of Oxford has ranked second behind the University of Cambridge in the Complete University Guide’s 2027 league table, marking the second consecutive year that Cambridge has claimed the top spot.
The largest discrepancies between the two institutions were in “quality of research” and “admissions standards”. While Oxford trails Cambridge marginally across several metrics, including graduate prospects and spending on academic services, the most significant gaps were in “research intensity” and “entry standards”. In both categories, Oxford scored 95%, compared to Cambridge’s 100%.
Meanwhile, Oxford exceeded Cambridge’s score in two more welfare-oriented measures: “student satisfaction” and “student-staff ratio”. Oxford received a student satisfaction score of 80%, compared to Cambridge’s 79%, while Oxford had 9.3 students per academic staff member, compared to Cambridge’s 10.7.
The Complete University Guide rankings are based on data drawn from publicly available sources. Research intensity, for instance, is calculated as “a measure of the proportion of teaching staff involved in research”. Since research intensity is measured only by reference to its relationship to teaching, the Complete University Guide recognises that the measure “can be an underestimate of the actual research intensity”.
“Entry standards” are calculated according to “the average UCAS tariff score of new undergraduate students”, equivalent to the proportion of A’s and A*’s achieved at A level. Oxford’s lower score may therefore reflect its entry requirements, which are, typically, lower than Cambridge’s. Notably, neither interview performance nor admissions tests are factored into the Complete University Guide’s data.
Students at both universities offered differing views on the ranking. Isaac, a second-year engineering student at Cambridge, told Cherwell that Oxford should use the result as motivation to improve its performance relative to leading international universities. However, Archie, a second-year psychology student at Oxford, was more sceptical of league tables, telling Cherwell: “There are loads of different university rankings and they often disagree…. I don’t think it makes sense to put too much stock in all the rankings.”
The University of Oxford was contacted for comment.
