Edinburgh is far better than Durham, Warwick and York for the sciences.
It beat each one of them in ALL the sciences in the last REF2014.
Edinburgh, in terms of prestige is only behind Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial and UCL.
Even its average entry tariff is higher than all of them bar Durham (which is a far smaller institution, hence can try to be highly selective).
Warwick is only mainly good in Economics an Maths. Apart from those 2 areas, nothing else makes it highly prestigious. Its sciences are just decently good.
Durham is all about entry tariff and posh kids. It is not research intensive. Only its Law department is near elite, and that itself is behind Oxbridge, LSE, UCL and KCL.
I’m fairly sure this was post #31 meaning. He/she can’t have been referring to LSE (and, by extension, the rest of the list) as one of the best schools for the sciences; LSE is a good school, but it’s not famous for its science courses, perhaps because they don’t exist.
Although here’s a table with Warwick and Durham ranked above Edinburgh for chemistry. Blanket statements aren’t always the best answer.
They fell to #2 this year - right behind Cambridge. I can’t imagine that bothered them too much - being ranked #1 in English for three straight years tends to do that. Their law department is ranked #3 in the country, and the university is #4 in classics.
@NotVerySmart, unfortunately you are producing tables that mainly focus on Customer Services performance, not academic stuff.
In tables that measure academic indicators, Durham and Warwick don’t do as well as Edinburgh.
UK-League tables are mostly customer service-orientated tables with their focus on “satisfaction surveys”, hence why the likes of Surrey are in top 10.
International league tables tend to focus on academic performances, prestige and successes.
If you are an top-tier international student looking for financial aid, there are 5 American schools that should top your list: Amherst, Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Yale. They are the only colleges in America that are need-blind in admissions AND provide full aid to accepted international students in the same manner as American applicants. All of them are excellent, but extremely selective.
For political science, I would exclude MIT, but the other four should be on your list.