ABERYSTWYTH University has claimed a top five finish in the 2017 National Student Survey - by discounting two colleges which finished above them.

Despite Aberystwyth enjoying another year of success and finishing top in Wales and within the top 10 in the UK for student satisfaction for the second year running - the university decided to create a loophole to better its placing and rank itself in the “UK Top 5” on promotional posters, on its website, and on social media videos.

The university actually finished joint seventh in this year’s NSS, along with Lancaster University, with a score of 91 per cent, one per cent lower than last year.

The result builds on the excellent turnaround in 2016 after student satisfaction at Aberystwyth had slipped to the low 80s.

Despite the excellent result, the university decided to bump up its own ranking by taking the scores of two institutions which finished above them - the Royal Veterinary College and St Mary’s University College, Belfast - out of the equation, because, the university said, they didn’t feature in a separate university guide.

Other universities across the UK shared their result, released on Wednesday, based on the final placings of all institutions featured in the annual NSS table.

An Aberystwyth University spokesperson said: “Aberystwyth University’s rankings are based on the overall satisfaction question and use the list of higher education institutes from The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018.”

“We use robust methodology to analyse the data, basing rankings on the overall satisfaction question and the list of higher education institutions and full-time honours student population used by the respected Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017. We make this clear on our website and in our literature,” they added.

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