Academic Reputation
Bristol is known for academics, excellent facilities, and a desirable location. League tables usually place Bristol within the top ten universities in the United Kingdom and it attracts many academically gifted students. For example, the 21 July 2011 edition of Times Higher Education reported that Bristol was fifth in a UK league table for the highest proportion of students with A-level grades AAB or better. Internationally, the 2011 QS World University Rankings placed Bristol at 30th overall in the world, moving up three places from its position in the 2009 THE-QS World University Rankings (in 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings parted ways to produce separate rankings). The rankings also placed Bristol at 15th in the world in terms of reputation with employers, placing higher than several American Ivy League universities, including Princeton University, Cornell and UPenn. Another international ranking, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities, placed Bristol 70th globally in 2011 The Times Higher Education World University Ranking placed Bristol at 66th in 2011. According to data published in The Telegraph Bristol has the third-highest percentage of 'good honours' of any UK university, behind Oxford and Cambridge. In the 2010 Centre for Higher Education's Development's Excellence Rankings, Bristol is one of only four UK Universities (Oxford, UCL and Manchester) to be rated Excellent in all seven departments.
However Bristol gained some of the lowest scores for student satisfaction in the 2008 National Student Survey and The Daily Telegraph have reported of student complaints about teaching quality. This has led to the recent deterioration in the University's rankings in the UK league tables, although it still ranks highly in international league tables.
The following courses offered by University of Bristol, managed to reach top 5 in the Times ranking (2008): Computer Science(3rd); Electrical and Electronic Engineering(3rd); Civil Engineering(5th); Biological Sciences(3rd); Mathematics (3rd); and Psychology (4th). Furthermore, the QS World University Rankings place Bristol in the world's top 100 universities for all subject areas in 2011: Arts and Humanities (57th), Natural Sciences (40th), Engineering & IT (83rd), Social Sciences (65th) and Life Sciences (70th). A further breakdown of the QS World University Natural Sciences Ranking shows the following: Earth Sciences (25th), Mathematics (35th), Environmental Sciences (39th), Physics (41st), and Chemistry (48th).
In addition, Bristol is particularly strong in the field of social sciences, particularly in Economics, Finance and Management, and was recently rated 4th in the 2008 Guardian University Guide for Business and Management Studies.
In 2011, The Guardian also ranked Bristol as 3rd in the UK for Geography, just behind 2nd place Oxford and ranked Bristol as 1st in the UK for Music.
Bristol is also known for its research strength, having 15 departments gaining the top grade of 5* in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. Overall, 36 out of 46 departments rated gained the top two ratings of 5 or 5*, and 76% of all the academic staff working in departments scored these top two levels. In terms of teaching strength, Bristol had an average Teaching Quality Assessment score of 22.05/24 before the TQA was abolished. For admission in October 2010, Bristol reported an average of 10.2 applications per place with the average A-level score on admission being 478.5. Bristol's drop-out rate is also lower than the benchmark set by HEFCE of no more than 3.1%.
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