The University of Cambridge has topped The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018’s league table for the fifth consecutive year. It was also a stellar year for universities in the Northwest and East Midlands, with Lancaster being named University of the Year and Nottingham Trent being named Modern University of the Year. Loughborough was named runner up for University of the Year whilst Nottingham, Essex and Glasgow were all shortlisted for the prestigious award.

The new edition of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 is published over three days, beginning with a free 96-page supplement published this weekend in The Sunday Times (September 24). It provides the definitive rankings for UK universities and the most comprehensive overview of higher education in Britain. It includes profiles on 131 universities and the definitive UK university rankings, making use of the latest data published in the past two months. A fully searchable website with university profiles and 67 subject tables will be published at www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/gooduniversityguide on Sunday for subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times.

As the UK’s second oldest university, Cambridge enjoys an excellent reputation across the globe. In academic terms, it has the highest average completion rate for any university in the UK, with 98.9% of graduates seeing their course through to the end. Of those that do finish, 92.1% achieve a first or 2:1, the second-highest proportion in the UK, a score bettered only by Oxford.

Such is the competition for places that it has the highest entry standards of any British university and it recently moved to reintroduce entrance tests across the university in addition to A-level results. The change is one result of various campaigns conducted by the university to attract more applicants, especially from state schools. In 2015-16, almost 62% of entrants were state-educated, which still fell below the university’s own benchmark but represented a vast improvement on previous years and significantly more than at Oxford.

The university has also moved to simplify its entry process. No longer are candidates required to complete an initial Cambridge form, as well as their UCAS form. Instead, they are sent the Supplementary Application Questionnaire after they submit their UCAS form to cover their academic experience in more detail.

The university tops 30 of the 67 subject tables that feature in the online edition of the Good University Guide as well as producing the best results in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.

Despite possessing some of the most ancient and iconic buildings of any university, huge sums have been spent modernising Cambridge’s infrastructure. It has undertaken a colossal £1bn development project expected to be completed by 2030 which, once completed, will provide accommodation for 2,000 additional postgraduates. The £26m Maxwell Centre opened last year on the West Cambridge site, giving Cambridge research groups the chance to work alongside industrial research scientists. As a result of the extensive development work, the university has the highest spend per student on facilities in the UK, spending on average £3,510 per student.

Lancaster University, The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide’s University of the Year, has jumped three places in the national league table to sixth place. Unlike other leading universities, it has not opted for huge expansion but it is firmly committed to cementing its place among the elite universities by becoming a truly "global player" in both teaching and research.

Lancaster is the first UK university to have a presence in sub-Saharan Africa after it opened a branch campus in Ghana. It also has a joint institute in China. Its criminology course was ranked top in the UK. Lancaster scored an impressive 84.3% positive for student satisfaction with their wider student experience (ranking it 7th in the UK), which underpinned its strong performance in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018.

The university has invested heavily in its campus, including eco-friendly student residences and a collaboration project with business and the NHS called the Health Innovation Campus. The first £41m phase of the project should be completed by 2019. The university was the eighth biggest spender on facilities across the UK – and the highest in the Northwest, spending an average of £3,104 per student.

Commenting on the decision to make Lancaster The Times and The Sunday Times University of the Year, Alastair McCall, editor of The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, said: “Rising to its highest ever ranking in our league table this year, Lancaster is at the top of its game. It knows the university it wants to be and as a result makes a distinctive offer to students.

"The modern interpretation of a collegiate structure, coupled with flexible degree programmes and academics committed to teaching as well as research has been recognised in consistently good outcomes in the annual National Student Survey. Students love Lancaster.

"Dynamic course content and structure, plus the opportunities many students get to work abroad, is reflected in outstanding graduate prospects once they leave. In the 19 years of our University of the Year awards, there has rarely been a more clear-cut winner."

Nottingham Trent, The Times and The Sunday Times Modern University of the Year, may be best known for its fashion and creative arts, but it is fast gaining a reputation for teaching excellence and strong student satisfaction levels.

It boasts one of the UK’s largest law schools, offering both legal practice courses and degrees. It is also investing in other areas, such as allocating £10m to improve its facilities for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). A new suite of degrees in biomedical, electronic and sport engineering have also been launched for the new academic year and it is continuing to build on its heritage in teacher education with the opening of the Nottingham Institute of Education. The centre of excellence is intended to align teaching and research expertise more effectively from the early years to higher education.

It was awarded gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) – the government ratings system for teaching quality published in June. The panel stated that the university demonstrated an “exemplary engagement with employers who contribute to curriculum development in a way which demonstrably enhances students’ employability”.

Alastair McCall, editor of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide, said: "Ranked third among the modern universities in our league table this year with a top 50 ranking overall, it has been an exceptional year for Nottingham Trent. It has improved its ranking in six of our key performance indicators.

"Its success is underpinned by outstanding scores in the National Student Survey. An analysis of the data, conducted for the Good University Guide, sees students ranking the university eighth in the UK for the quality of teaching, and just four places lower for the wider student experience.

"A focus on the student experience together with strong engagement with employers - which bears fruit with more than three-quarters of students gaining professional jobs or going into further study on graduation - makes Nottingham Trent the outstanding candidate to be our Modern University of the Year."

The University of Loughborough was named runner up for University of the Year and it achieved its highest ever placing in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 rising four places to 7^th in the national league table. The university, which unsurprisingly has the best sporting performance in the UK, continued its meteoric rise to put it on a par with the UK’s most prestigious universities. It scored highly in National Student Survey for student satisfaction with teaching quality (84.4% positive, ranking ninth), and second place for satisfaction with their student experience (86.9%) – with only St Andrews achieving a higher score.

Only four years ago Loughborough was outside the top 20, but increases in student satisfaction and graduate prospects have seen the university grow in popularity – applications are up by almost a half since 2011 and there has been a further 5% increase in 2017, whilst applications to university overall have gone into decline.

Best known for its illustrious sporting pedigree – Adam Peaty, a double gold medallist at this year’s world swimming championships in Budapest, trains in its Olympic sized swimming pool – it now has a blistering academic reputation, too. Only eight universities entered such a high proportion of their eligible staff – 88% - for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, with almost three-quarters of its research being judged as world-leading or internationally excellent. This helped it climb three places in the world rankings to 234^th. It was ranked the top university in three subjects: building, communications and media studies, and librarianship and information management.

In a year of high achievement that saw it shortlisted for the University of the Year Award, the University of Nottingham was named among graduate employers’ favourite recruiting grounds and featured as the top Russell Group university in The Economist’s analysis of average graduate salaries in comparison with their expected levels.

The East Midlands’ university also rose in the national league table by two places to 18, and, the day after it received a gold rating the in the TEF, launched a £200m research fund. The research fund, the biggest at any UK university, will be spread over five years and will cover subject areas including modern slavery and propulsion. It was also rated as the best university for agriculture and forestry in the UK by the The Times and The Sunday Times University Guide 2018.

Overall, London universities fared extremely poorly in student perceptions of teaching quality, with the London School of Economics (LSE) being rated the worst in the country (67.5% student satisfaction) in our analysis of the latest National Student Survey. St George’s London was the second worst (74.3%), University of Westminster fifth worst (75.5%), Queen Mary, London seventh worst (76%), and Goldsmiths, London and Kingston universities equal with the ninth worst scores in this area (76.3%).

LSE, which dropped three places and to fall outside of the top 10, was also the highest profile casualty of the government’s new TEF, when it received the lowest bronze award, due in large part to the poor levels of student satisfaction. The TEF verdict came just days after another official report showed that LSE graduates to be the highest-paid in the country after five years, with a quarter of economics graduates earning more than £120,000.

With more than 10 applications for each place – it remains one of the most popular universities in the UK and attracts the highest proportion of international students at any publicly funded university. Boasting more than 30 past or present heads of states as either LSE students or academics, it maintains its position as a world leader in social sciences.

The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 published on September 24 provides students and their parents with an invaluable first reference point on the path to finding a university place. It contains full profiles of all universities. The league table is made up of nine indicators including student satisfaction with teaching quality and their wider student experience, research quality, graduate prospects, entrance qualifications held by new students, degree results achieved, student/staff ratios, service and facilities spend, and degree completion rates. The Times will complement coverage in The Sunday Times with two further supplements to be published on Monday and Tuesday, September 25 and 26. These will focus on the best universities for teaching quality and student experience and the universities that come top in different subject areas.

Expanded coverage with 67 subject tables in full,interactive tables on all the league table components, and additional features are available to Times and Sunday Times subscribers at thesundaytimes.co.uk/gooduniversityguide. Non-subscribers can gain complimentary access to two articles a week when they enter an email address and register.