Best universities for Physics
Built only from official government data.
You may not agree with this order. We present the data as we find it, and we say plainly how much we think each measure is worth. Every weight is published, every figure is sourced and dated, and where we cannot prove something we leave it blank rather than fill it in. Complete transparency is the whole claim — disagree with the weighting, and you can see exactly what you are disagreeing with.
Tier 1 — strongest for this subject
On our measures these are the strongest places in our catalogue to study this. They are listed alphabetically: the differences between them are smaller than the uncertainty in the data.
Tier 2
Strong, and separated from Tier 1 by more than the margin of error.
Tier 3
Solid, with a measurable gap to the tiers above.
Tier 4
Further back on the measures we use.
Tier 5
Furthest back on the measures we use.
Looking for University of Cambridge? It is not missing from this table by omission.
Cambridge does not offer single-subject degrees in these. Physics, chemistry and biology are all taught inside the Natural Sciences Tripos, where students take several sciences in the first year and specialise from the second. You will find it under Natural Sciences, where BA Natural Sciences is ranked.
Universities inside a tier are listed alphabetically, and there is no order within a tier — the differences are smaller than the data can carry, so publishing one would be inventing it. Open any university, or several at once, for the published figures behind it: earnings, satisfaction, research and the rest, on the same rows every time so they can be read side by side.
Courses we hold that are not in this table
None of these is a judgement on the course. A university marked not in this table at all is missing for one of the reasons below and for no other reason — never because it scored badly.
Geophysics BSc — HESA classifies this as geography, earth and environmental studies, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Astrophysics — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
BSc Astrophysics — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
BSc Astronomy — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
Physics / Theoretical Physics (faster route) BSc/MSci — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
Geophysical and Atmospheric Sciences — HESA classifies this as geography, earth and environmental studies, so it is measured against that subject rather than this one.
BSc Physics with Astronomy — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
Physics with Computer Science — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
BSc Physics & Astronomy — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
BSc Astrophysics — we have not yet matched this course to its official record.
A university missing from every list above is not ranked last — it is not ranked. Either we do not list it, or it has no Physics course in the official data at all. An absence means "we do not know", never "it is weak".
Not published: Other — not a discipline — a browsing bucket with no subject classification behind it, so there is nothing coherent to rank its courses against. We would rather leave a subject out than band it on too little.
Who decided this order?
We did, out of eight published government measures with every weight shown — and none of them is a survey of opinion. The next tab has all of it: what each measure contributes, what we deliberately left out, where the order stops being something the data can support, and the source and year of every figure.
Sources: Discover Uni (on_2026_09_29_12_31_32), the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset, Graduate Outcomes, the National Student Survey, and REF 2021. Snapshot on_2026_09_29_12_31_32-c6abef4e77df, computed 2026-10-05. Each source publishes annually or less often, so these tables change when a release lands and not otherwise.