King’s College London (KCL) fell to 28th in The Guardian’s domestic rankings, while climbing to 24th place in The Times and The Sunday Times’ domestic rankings and 36th in the Times Higher Education’s international rankings.
This article was originally published in print on 28 November 2024.
The start of the academic year saw the release of three new sets of university rankings. Both The Guardian’s and The Times and The Sunday Times’ domestic rankings, known as the Good University Guide, were released in September. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, unconnected to The Times newspaper, were released in October.
The Guardian‘s rankings dropped KCL from its 2024 position of 23rd, five places to 28th. However, 28th is still five places higher than KCL’s average position of 33rd over the last ten The Guardian rankings.
In the 2025 subject rankings, KCL’s position varied greatly. KCL boasted its number-one position in sociology and social policy. However, this was the only subject area in which the university ranked first. By contrast, KCL ranked last in Mathematics, Physics and Theology and Religious Studies.
The Good University Guide gave King’s second place in Music but ranked the university second-to-last in Anthropology.
Although not as harsh as The Guardian, the Good University Guide also ranked KCL poorly in both Maths (37th) and Physics and Astronomy (38th). Like in The Guardian’s rankings, KCL fared better in the social sciences, ranking 5th in Sociology and 12th in Politics.
In the Good University Guide’s overall rankings, KCL climbed three spots to 24th. However, this is perhaps surprising given the individual metrics used to collate the overall score. With very poor rankings of 123rd for teaching quality and 116th for student experience, it is clear that KCL had to rely upon its stronger metrics of research quality (8th) and graduate prospects (13th) to keep in the race.
In both domestic rankings, KCL trailed far behind its London rivals. The Guardian ranked all three of KCL’s main London rivals in the top 10. LSE and Imperial sat next to each other in 4th and 5th whilst UCL placed 9th.
In the Good University Guide’s rankings, it was Imperial and UCL finding themselves side by side, in 6th and 7th. Like The Guardian, the Good University Guide deemed LSE to be the best university in London. They did not stop there, going so far as to rank LSE number one in the entire country.
Despite performing extremely well in the domestic rankings, LSE fell behind in the Times Higher Education’s international rankings. It was judged to be the fourth-best London university, ranking in 50th place internationally behind Imperial (9th), UCL (22nd) and KCL (36th).
While rising two spots from 38th last year, KCL’s teaching score in the Times Higher Education rankings remains sub-par. On this metric, KCL scores 17.5 points lower than UCL and 29.2 points lower than Imperial.
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