The increased chance of nabbing a high-paying job is one of the main reasons why young people in the UK bother to go to uni. That and all the deals on Jägerbombs on sports night, of course. It turns out that the grad salaries at Russell Group unis vary by a huge amount in 2025 – and Oxbridge aren’t even top.
The Daily Mail’s annual uni ranking is out, and it includes the median salaries of UK grads in full-time employment from each uni, 15 months after they left.
Four Russell Group unis actually have the same (or higher) median grad salaries as Oxbridge do in 2025. I did not expect this. Ex-students from Imperial College London are raking in the highest salaries of all. Imperial College London is also the UK uni where the most grads feel their careers are on track. I guess that’s the uni to go to if you really want a high-paying job (and you are willing to do an awful lot of STEM).
Remember, lots of factors can impact how high a uni’s median grad salary is. STEM-related grad jobs tend to pay better than humanities ones. This explains why unis with a strong emphasis of STEM – such as Imperial, LSE and the Uni of Warwick – rank so highly for grad salaries. Lots of London students tend to stick around in the city after uni, and many grad jobs in the capital offer higher salaries (in an attempt to compensate for how expensive it is to live there).
So, here are all the Russell Group unis ranked by the median grad salary in 2025 (according to the Daily Mail):
24. Queen’s University Belfast – £27,000
=21. Cardiff University – £28,000
=21. University of Liverpool – £28,000
=21. University of York – £28,000
20. University of Manchester – £28,400
Some impressive photography
19. Newcastle University – £28,900
18. University of Leeds – £29,000
17. University of Sheffield – £29,400
16. University of Glasgow – £29,925
=9. University of Birmingham – £30,000
=9. University of Bristol – £30,000
=9. University of Edinburgh – £30,000
=9. University of Exeter – £30,000
=9. University of Nottingham – £30,000
I hope Notts students also turn up to lectures like this
=9. Queen Mary University of London – £30,000
=9. University of Southampton – £30,000
8. Durham University – £31,000
=6. King’s College London (KCL) – £32,000
=6. University of Warwick – £32,000
=4. University of Oxford – £33,000
=4. University College London (UCL) – £33,000
3. University of Cambridge – £34,000
2. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – £36,000
1. Imperial College London – £37,000
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