Although the new school term hasn’t even started yet, if there’s one thing you can be sure about at this time of year it’s that many students who’ve just left Year 12 won’t have their minds on beginning their final year of secondary school. Instead, they’ll be looking towards the next step of their education, namely university. By this point in the summer almost all of those planning on going to university the academic year after next have at the very least started giving serious consideration to the course they’ll do or where they’ll apply to. And one of the key things they’ll use to help them make their choice is university league tables.

University league tables have been a prominent feature of the university landscape for some time now. Universities who climb the league tables will loudly trumpet their success, while individual departments will refer to bits of their university league tables scores–whether it be research or teaching excellence or career prospects of their graduates–in their attempts to sell themselves to prospective students.

But when you look at university league tables, what you end up being confronted with is a load of numbers. And while the people that make the league tables are kind enough to label each column, as someone who’s never been to university before you’ll be forgiven for not fully knowing the significance of them all.

While the overall position that a university occupies in the university league tables is important, it’s at least every bit as important to understand what the numbers that make up the overall positions mean for you, and how you should weigh them up against each other. So to help you get started in putting the university league tables to work for you, here are three important sets of scores within them that are worth examining a bit further.

Teaching quality and research quality

The first of these categories is fairly self-explanatory; the second essentially means how much significance is attached to the ideas, arguments and discoveries that the academic staff of the university in question come up with, whether it be breakthroughs in understanding cancer or shedding new light on Viking culture.

Now, one thing it’s important for you to understand as a prospective undergraduate is that a lot of importance is often attached to research quality in university league tables–and therefore which universities are considered ‘good’ or ‘the best’–but that this research quality doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of teaching you receive by those same people who create this excellent research will be any good.

So, don’t be put off by a university coming lower than you’d expect in the university league tables; it could just be that it’s not a research-focused university, and as a result loses points in what is a key category for league table purposes even though this low score is not necessarily something that would make much difference to the quality of the education you’d receive there.

Subject tables and overall tables

Another area that causes confusion amongst students is the fact that there are both overall university league tables and university league tables that compare a given subject across all the UK’s universities. People who scrutinize both sets of tables will often notice that it’s perfectly possible for a university to top a subject table but be low down the overall university league tables.

So which should you prioritize? Well, like with the teaching and research quality scores, it’s important to consider which is of greater practical relevance to you. If you go to a university that’s in the top five overall but towards the bottom of the table for the subject you want to study, the amazing quality of the other departments it has will be little comfort to you once you’re there if the teaching you receive is poor. So the subject tables are unquestionably important.

Of course, it can’t be denied that our society’s overall perception of which universities are the ‘best’ ones corresponds more to the overall league-table positions they occupy than a more detailed and nuanced consideration of which universities are best for which subjects. Nevertheless, for the purposes of what you’ll get out of your degree the subject tables are a very important piece of guidance, while the overall university league tables won’t be able to tell you too much about whether a given university is the right one for you.