The University of Liverpool has been named second in the group of North West universities in The Sunday Times University Guide 2012.
Liverpool has risen to second place from third last year.
The Sunday Times cites the University’s success as partly due to the institution’s high score for teaching excellence, its high proportion of leavers finding graduate-level jobs and low rate of graduate unemployment.
The University, however, has fallen in the national rankings from 29 in 2010 to 32 in 2011.
Lancaster University tops the North West table for the second year running and enters the top 20 institutions nationally whilst the University of Manchester is ranked third.
The Sunday Times University Guide 2012 provides students and their parents with a first reference point to finding a university place. It contains full profiles of all universities and the leading colleges of higher education. The league table is drawn up from criteria including student satisfaction; teaching and research quality; entrance qualifications held by new students; degree results achieved; student/staff ratios; graduate unemployment levels, and university dropout rates.