As we discussed earlier in the week, university league tables are complicated things. They present you with a mass of data that relates to a very wide range of aspects of what a university does, and then uses it all to give a somewhat black-and-white-seeming ranking of the country’s universities.

And as we hope our earlier explanation made you aware, the final position that a university occupies in the university league tables isn’t the first and last word when it comes to deciding which universities to apply to.

Instead, getting the most out of the university league tables depends on scrutinizing the different scores contained within them more carefully, and understanding what they all really mean and which ones are most important to you.

In our last blog post we suggested that you pay at the very least as much attention to the teaching quality score in the university league tables as the research quality score, which plays a key role in determining the overall positions but doesn’t measure something that will necessarily be of benefit to you as an undergraduate. And we also suggested that subject tables be taken into account as much, and probably even more so, than the overall university league tables.

But these aren’t the only things you need to know about university league tables. They also contain scores in lots of other categories, some of which are important and some of which are less so. To help you find the information from the university league tables that’ll be most useful to you, we’d suggest you pay particular attention to these three headings:

Staff-student ratio

This measurement is really important, as it gives you a good idea of how much direct interaction you will have with your department’s academic staff. If there are only a couple of lecturers for teaching hundreds of students, not only will it mean that much of your teaching will involve you passively taking notes rather than debating with experts and fellow students in small-group seminars, but you’ll also find it difficult to speak to someone if you’re having problems with an aspect of the course or if you want more detailed feedback on your coursework.

National Student Survery scores

We really like this one because it’s one of the few components of university league tables that is based around the perspectives of students who have progressed through the university. The NSS involves a very detailed series of questions across a wide range of categories, and it is also completed every year by thousands of students. All this means it helps build up a picture of what students really think about the course and the university you are interested in.

Careers destinations

Most university league tables contain a score based around what proportion of graduates from the university have found a graduate-level job or gone on to further studies within six months of graduating. While it’s important to qualify the significance of this figure–how you do after university will primarily be about your own aspirations and ambition–if you see a university that scores highly in this category it suggests that employers are clearly impressed with students that come from that institution, and as such it can serve as something of a gauge of employers’ perceptions of the university.