CHE-ExcellenceRanking 2010: Great Britain with twenty-six universities in the Excellence Group

130 universities in Europe offer outstanding, research-strong departments with an international orientation for master’s and doctoral students in the subjects of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics; for this accomplishment, they belong to the "Excellence Group" of the CHE-ExcellenceRanking 2010.

Seven universities in Great Britain with four departments each are represented in the Excellence Group. These are the Imperial College London, University College London - University of London, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Manchester and University of Oxford.

Eight criteria were important for selection: number of publications, number of citations, student and staff mobility, and presence of Erasmus Mundus master’s programmes or Marie-Curie projects. Likewise, a deciding factor was whether researchers earned an ERC Grant or a Nobel Prize within their specialist area.

Aside from the abundant quantitative data, the CHE-ExcellenceRanking also features a large amount of useful information on master’s and doctoral study programmes, including facts about the research groups and their emphases as well as on the size of the faculties, terms of admission and accommodation facilities. Current students have also shared their judgments regarding student conditions for the benefit of prospective students.

All of this is available online in the CHE-ExcellenceRanking, with the results of this year’s round of the natural science subject areas (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) and Mathematics as well as the results from last year’s analysis of the subjects Economics, Psychology and Political Science. With this, the CHE-ExcellenceRanking 2010 comprises information from over 4.500 research groups in 19 countries which interested future scientists can refer to in their search for a relevant programme.

The non-profit Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) is an independent organisation based in Gütersloh, Germany committed to reforming the higher education system. Each year, it carries out the CHE-UniversityRanking of German universities and other universities abroad aimed at first-year university students. With the CHE-ExcellenceRanking, comparisons can be made of the best research universities in Europe for beginning master’s or doctoral students.

The detailed results of the CHE-ExcellenceRanking will be available on the internet at www.excellence-ranking.org on Wednesday, October 27 and published on October 28 in the German weekly magazine DIE ZEIT. Facts and further information on the CHE-ExcellenceRanking can be found at www.che-excellence-ranking.eu.

For questions about the CHE-ExcellenceRanking, the CHE expert team can be reached at excellence@che-ranking.de, Telephone: +49 5241 211 79 71