Uniselect methodology

CONTENTS

1. How does Uniselect work?
2. Where does the data come from?
3. How do we calculate the percentage match?
4. Technical notes

How does Uniselect work? 

Uniselect was designed to make the university search easier, faster, and less stressful for prospective students.  

It uses high-quality data to give users a percentage match based on the answers they provide to a short series of questions.  

Where does the data come from? 

The data used to create this tool comes from a range of sources.  

Data on university location, campus size and university group come from the IDP Connect database. 

The data used to filter by course type and mode of study come from both the Complete University Guide and UCAS. 

UCAS also provides the data needed to provide students with options based on their expected UCAS points.  

For filter questions on university type or rankings for things like graduate prospects and student satisfaction, the data is taken from the Complete University Guide profiles and league tables which use publicly available data from HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) and NSS (National Student Survey). To find out more about how these calculations are made please refer to our league table methodology. 

For university lifestyle questions, the data was taken from the Complete University Guide’s profile consultation. 

How do we calculate the percentage match? 

The percentage match calculation works by assigning a score to each answer that a user gives. The score depends on whether a university matches the criteria given, and in some circumstances to what extent they match. 

The highest weighting is given to their three key priorities if selected. These include highly rated graduate prospects, teaching, and subject ranking (detailed in the table below). Other matching criteria contribute incrementally to a total possible score. The percentage match shows how well each uni compares against that total. 

Questions act as either a hard filter or soft filter. A hard filter means that the results page will only show direct matches, meaning that if a student chooses to study in London, they will not be given any other region as an option. A soft filter means that the results page will show some universities that do not exactly match with a chosen criterion. You can see in further detail how each question filters results in the table below.  

The calculation takes the total score a user gets from their matching answers and divides it by the total score they could have received from their answers. 

Technical notes 

By filter and data source 

The table below outlines how each question operates to create a university shortlist, and where the data comes from.  

** Takes the average score for NSS questions 1-11. A university is classed as “Highly rated…” if it is in the top quartile for that category. For example, taking ‘High university ranking,’ there are 130 universities in the Complete University Guide league tables. Top quartile = 130 * 0.25 = 32.5. This is rounded to 33, so the top 33 universities in the Complete University Guide league tables are classed as ‘High university ranking’. Therefore, all universities including and above Harper Adams have a ‘High university ranking’ and should be classed as a match. This should include the top 33 inclusive e.g., ‘High student satisfaction’ ranks University of Wales Trinity St David and Imperial College London joint 33rd. Both of these institutions will be classed as having ‘High student satisfaction’ meaning overall there are 34 institutions in this category rather than 33. 

*** Aligns with Subject league tables  

**** Match based on subject level. If a user selects online study, a university will only match if they offer at least one course in the chosen subject area that has online study as an option 

***** A university will match on UCAS points if they offer at least one course in the user’s selected subject area where the user’s UCAS points meet that course’s entry requirements.