10th 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 Philosophy. The Department of Philosophy ranked 10th in the UK in The Complete University Guide 2025.

York also ranked highly in the subjects of English (8th), History (9th), Iberian Languages (Spanish) (6th), Linguistics (10th) and Social Work (3rd), highlighting the quality of our joint degrees with the Departments of English, History, Language and Linguistic Science and the School for Business and Society.

Head of Department, Professor Tom Stoneham said, "We are delighted that the Complete University Guide is recognising our outstanding research and teaching performance. We offer our students a diverse curriculum taught by world-leading experts which aims to give them critical thinking and analytical skills as well as confidence to navigate the complex social and ethical problems the world currently faces. "

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.