University of Southampton

Join our community of staff, students and researchers at the University of Southampton. As a global top 100 university, our expert academics and wide range of study options will help you achieve your goals.

Our research impact:

Research at the University of Southampton is addressing some of the most challenging issues facing society. From improving cancer treatments to optimising renewable energy and fighting COVID-19. Discover how our research is changing the world for the better.

Our strategy:

Purpose and vision: what drives and inspires us.

This is the place to discover our strategy, including our purpose, vision, goals, values and more.

Key to our success:

Inspiring the remarkable:

• We inspire excellence to achieve the remarkable and build an inclusive world.
• Our people are our University; they are at the heart of everything we do and the impact we make on a local to global scale.
• We create and share new knowledge to find answers to the greatest challenges facing humanity. Our people inspire and empower one another to apply their knowledge to transform lives.
• We are committed to excellence in all we do, applying our insights and inventiveness to solve the most complex societal and environmental challenges. Our impact stems from the combined power of our excellence in education, research, and knowledge exchange and enterprise (KEE); our people harness this to achieve the remarkable.
• We strive for greater inclusivity in our community, as diversity is a strength. It makes us more creative and accelerates our impact on society. Through partnership, we aim to inspire communities working with us locally and globally to change the world for the better.

Rankings and reputation:

Our reputation and rankings are based on a range of criteria, including entry standards, student satisfaction, staff and student ratio, expenditure on facilities and resources, research quality, and reputation among employers and academics from other institutions. We are also a founding member of the Russell Group, an organisation of 24 top UK universities committed to maintaining the highest research and teaching standards. Membership of the Russell Group is widely considered an indicator of quality university education. They attract the best academics working on the most innovative research projects, thanks to the greater funding, facilities, and support that they offer. 

UK league table rankings:

• 17th overall and 2nd for Counselling & Occupational Therapy with 14 subject areas in the top 10 in The Complete University Guide 2024
• 17th in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024
• 20th overall in The Guardian University Guide 2024
• 21st in the UK according to the Daily Mail University Rankings

International league table rankings:

• 81st in the QS World University Rankings (2024)
• Six subjects in the global top 50, according to QS World University Rankings by Subject (2023): Nursing (6); Archaeology (33); Earth and Marine Sciences (39); Statistics & Operational Research (39); Geology (42); Geophysics (43) 
• Twelve subjects in the top 100 globally: Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering (51); Physics and Astronomy (59); Medicine (62); Electrical & Electronic Engineering (72); Civil & Structural Engineering (51-100 band); Philosophy (51-100 band). 
• 108th in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2023 and 12th among UK universities listed.
• 11th in Times Higher Education's (THE) 'Golden Age' universities 2020 - the top 200 institutions founded as universities between 1945 and 1967. Southampton is second among the UK universities featured. 

Student satisfaction:

The National Student Survey (NSS) gathers feedback from mainly final-year undergraduates about their time in UK universities. Highlights from the NSS 2020 results include:

• 84.7% of our students were satisfied with the overall quality of their course 
• 84.5% of our students were satisfied with the teaching on their course 
• 85.8% of our students were satisfied with the learning resources provided by the University 
• 89.3% of our students agreed that staff were good at explaining things 
• 87.7% of our students agreed that their course was intellectually stimulating 

Research and innovation excellence:

We are a research-intensive university, with continued substantial growth in research funding and seventh in the UK for the total value of The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants. We are also a founding partner of SETsquared, the university business incubator ranked number one in the world by UBI Global.

According to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021:

• 92 per cent of our research is world leading or internationally excellent, which assessed the quality of research in UK higher education institutions
• we are in the top 10 per cent of UK universities and fourth in the Russell Group for impact demonstrating the real-world benefit of our research
• over 97 per cent of our research environment is world-leading or internationally excellent

For information on admission requirements, kindly contact our admissions counsellor!