<p>'Randomuser' is more than a bit random when guiding us through the delights of Brit unis. For a start places like Bristol and Durham are regarded as good alsoran academies -they are not front rank, sound though they are, and they do not have much international standing.</p>
<p>The big wheel institutions: there are 4 that traditionally year in year out make the running: Oxford and Cambridge (good all round, especially in the humanities and in pure science, not so hot in social sciences/technology). LSE -for the social sciences as a whole, and Imperial -for technology and applied science and medicine. These are the places that supply the famous names and that make the breakthroughs and that influence public life. Sure it's unfair, and there are other worthy places (ie Manchester, Edinburgh), but this is where the action is, and it will take a heck of a long time and an awful lot of achievement before others can catch up. One major problem is money and competition - all of the big four began life in the days when there was far less competition and when money mattered less - so they had the chance to build up a strong lead in their best areas - and now there are far too many universities and too little money for their rivals to close the gap. </p>
<p>Be careful in addition about institutions that owe their status to fashion and good PR rather than real world achievement: ie Warwick, York, St Andrews -often they are fine colleges, but their rep is still inflated -not that anybody has heard of them very much outside the UK. And how are they going to get the funding and multiple Nobel Prizes and research investment to catch up with the big four who established themselves long, long, ago?</p>
<p>Another grouping:the G5-the four above plus University College London -the G5 is really a semi formal lobby group. They come together to hustle for funds and resources. Sometimes the perceptual/reputational kaleidoscope shifts again and you hear people talk about the 'Golden Triangle' (Oxford and Cambridge and the leading London University colleges -yes, LSE, Imperial UCL and maybe King's)</p>
<p>Then there's the Russell Group, another self- selecting 'elite' body which incudes the above five and totals about twenty universities, including Bristol and places like Warwick -it includes most of the 'good' universities, although outstanding places like Sussex belong to different clusters (there's even a research intensive cabal called the 95 group to which Sussex belongs) - so none of it's an exact science - a bit like British society itself it's formed of overlapping and eccentric groupings whose exact composition depends on who you're chatting to.</p>
<p>But get one thing right: in the long term the big four remains the big four: LSE, Oxford, Imperial, Cambridge (in no particular order).</p>