8th in the UK: Complete University Guide 2025

This week, we maintained our place among the UK’s most highly regarded departments for the subject of English. The Department of English and Related Literature ranked 8th in the UK in The Complete University Guide 2025.

York also ranked highly in the subjects of history (9th), history of art, architecture and design (6th), linguistics (10th) and philosophy (10th), highlighting the quality of our joint degrees with the Departments of History, History of Art, Language and Linguistic Science and Philosophy.

Head of Department, Professor Jennie Batchelor said, "we are delighted to have maintained our position as one of the top UK English departments in the UK. This is a wonderful result that attests to the strength of our inclusive academic community, our ambitious teaching and research and our unwavering  commitment to student experience."

York’s overall position

The University of York ranked joint 17th overall in the Complete University Guide 2025. The guide ranks 130 institutions across the UK.

In total, 14 subjects at York were ranked in the UK top 10:

• Archaeology (7th)
• Biological Sciences (7th)
• Chemistry (7th)
• Drama, Dance and Cinematics (3rd)
• English (8th)
• French (4th)
• History (9th)
• History of Art, Architecture and Design (6th)
• Iberian Languages (Spanish) (6th)
• Linguistics (10th)
• Marketing (6th)
• Philosophy (10th)
• Psychology (9th)
• Social Work (3rd)

A further 10 subjects appeared in the UK top 20.

About the Complete University Guide

Published annually, The Complete University Guide league tables rank the best universities in the UK. It covers 74 separate subject areas, as well as an overall institutional ranking. Universities and subjects are ranked on entry standards, student satisfaction, research quality, graduate prospects, completion rates, student-staff ratio and spend on academic services and facilities.

The rankings are based on public domain data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the National Student Survey and the Research Excellence Framework 2021.