Top 10 sports universities in the UK
Sports are an important part of the student experience in the UK.
But unlike the U.S., its culture has more of a 'participation' focus than the fanatic college sports scene you see on TV at U.S. colleges -- with sometimes 100,000 students, locals and other supporters alike cheering on the college athletes and teams.
In the UK, there are no multimillion dollar stadiums or TV deals.
Full athletic scholarships are rare (except for one university below), though there are partial scholarships and premier coaching and support for athletes in certain performance sports.
And UK students don't walk around campus head to toe in their university apparel either.
That doesn't, however, mean there is no school spirit or sense of competition.
From social leagues to the UK’s NCAA equivalent BUCS (British Universities & Colleges Sport) or SSS (Scottish Student Sport), every UK university has a large number of clubs that play at various levels.
For example, in the BUCS, teams and individuals compete to win leagues, cups and tournaments that earn BUCS points for their university.
They often compete on a European or international level, too.
And one really nice feature of studying in the UK, however, is that there are no classes at UK universities on Wednesday afternoons so teams can compete against each other.
So whether it's from regular success in the BUCS, producing Olympic athletes and sports stars, boasting impressive sporting facilities, high-quality teaching and research in sports science or simply for having a strong sports culture, these are some of the top sports universities in the UK.
Loughborough University
If Loughborough University were a country, it would have finished sixth overall in the 2022 Commonwealth Games; with 47 medals, it would have been ahead of South Africa, Jamaica and Nigeria.
Recognized almost annually as the best university in the world to study sports (QS subject rankings), Loughborough is also a great place to play sports.
They have a 50-meter Olympic swimming pool, a stadium exclusive to the university for sports such as soccer and rugby, a cricket centre, indoor tennis centre, athletics track, squash courts, two world-class gyms and more.
It actually looks like an American campus – or professional team training site.
It offers the most comprehensive sports development program in the UK, where students have access to bespoke training and testing equipment, the latest physiological, molecular, and environmental technologies, two climate chambers and a range of dedicated laboratories.
The university has also hosted the UEFA European Under 17 championships, BUCS Super Rugby Showcase games and many other high profile events.
Durham University
The third oldest university in England, Durham University has been ranked the #1 university for team sports in the UK each year since 2013, while also being named The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023 Sports University of the Year.
Most of Durham’s teams compete in the Premier League of the BUCS, the highest division.
Utilizing postgraduate sport scholars and undergraduate-student athletes, Durham has won more than 60 BUCS National Championships since 2019.Â
And since there are no caps on eligibility in the UK, many Durham students will continue to compete while completing their master’s or PhD programs.
One of the unique aspects of Durham is that it’s made up of 17 colleges of residence, and students belong to one for the duration of their studies even if they don’t live there all years of the degree.
The colleges then compete against each other at the intramural level, resulting in some great rivalries.
In total, 75 percent of the student population at Durham is involved in sport, either in BUCS or college sport.
In terms of investment, Durham has recently spent £32 million on Team Durham’s home, Maiden Castle, on new weight areas, classrooms, three new competition courts, updates to outdoor fields and pitches, updated locker rooms, study spaces and a canteen.Â
Durham even has special events for their student-athletes, including a Thanksgiving meal in the Castle, formals, team socials and a year-end awards ceremony.
Some of their most successful student-athletes coming from North America have competed in soccer, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, rugby, water polo, tennis, fencing, field hockey and American football.
University of Stirling
The Good University Guide’s 2020 Sport University of the Year, the University of Stirling has been known to train an Olympic athlete or a few (to date, 24 Olympians and seven Paralympians to be exact).
The university is also home to the National Tennis Academy and the National Swimming Academy.
It's where stars like tennis great Andy Murray first trained and Britain's most successful swimmer, Duncan Scott, studied and trained.
Founded in 1967, Stirling has grown its community to around 17,000 students, 400 of whom are from the U.S. and 20% of whom are international students in general.
Most notable is the fact that 4,000 of its students play sports, and this is evident walking around campus, as almost everyone was wearing some sort of athletic apparel.
Stirling has eight performance sports: tennis, golf, men's and women's football, swimming, triathlon, rugby and curling.
Women's football in particular competes professionally in the Scottish Women's Premier League.
Currently, there are 151 students competing in these performance sports on scholarship, and they have the added benefit of access to their own training suite.
University of Essex
Founded in 1964, the University Essex stood out to me for a number of reasons, including its philosophy that students are admitted on the basis of their potential and not necessarily their past.
With 17,000 students (40% of whom are international), Essex has impressive facilities for a university built in the 60s, and that includes the facilities for sports.
It's a very sporty university, especially for volleyball and basketball, and it draws the largest crowds in the country for its games.
Women's basketball competes at a professional level, and volleyball is on the cusp of becoming semi-pro.
Admittedly, I have never seen locker rooms like theirs in the UK; it is professional level!
Essex has also recently launched the Athlete Village, which is dedicated housing for athletes just a few minutes from the sporting facilities.
But perhaps the biggest selling points is the fact that Essex is one of the only universities to offer up to 100 percent scholarships for a number of sports.
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter has a strong academic reputation, but it's also quite a sporty university, regularly ranked first in the country for rugby, hockey and sailing.
Set in the historical town of Exeter (which predates the Romans), the Streatham campus is the main site.
It offers 52 different sports clubs, and that includes around 450 athletes in performance programs and more than 5,000 students in intramural sport.
Exeter is considered the top sporting university in the south of England and Wales, as it consistently places in the top 10 of the BUCS league.
Newcastle University
With the success of Newcastle United in the English Premier League, the city of Newcastle has garnered a lot of attention recently.
And with partnerships with three top flight sports teams in soccer, rugby and basketball, Newcastle University is also one of the top sporty universities in the UK.
In fact, Newcastle United’s club doctor even teaches within the sports science degree at Newcastle, which was the first UK sports science program to be brought into the medical faculty.
Whereas a lot of sport science programs focus on performance and coaching, at Newcastle it's also about health and well-being and the science and research around that.
The facilities are amazing at this redbrick institution; a £30 million investment for both indoor and outdoor sites have resulted in professional teams reserving time to use them – such as the Newcastle Falcons rugby team, which I saw firsthand!
Newcastle Uni also has an environmental chamber to enable the simulation of altitude, temperature and humidity, a gait track, biomechanics laboratory, physiology laboratory, high-performance suite, nutrition kitchen and blood preparation and analysis lab.
And the Director of Sport, Katy Storie, is a former professional rugby player who represented England internationally and in the World Cup.
But the success doesn’t stop there; a number of Newcastle graduates won medals in rowing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Most recently, Obi Ene, a third-year Accounting and Finance student at Newcastle University Business School and sport scholar, has signed a three-year rugby pro-contract with Sale Sharks Rugby Union Football Club.
Cardiff Metropolitan University
According to former England rugby manager Eddie Jones, Cardiff Met University is ‘the breeding ground of rugby.’
In fact, a number of their graduates have gone on to receive professional rugby contracts, including Americans Ethan McVeigh, Brandon Harvey, Koby Baker and Ethyn Baker.Â
From the moment you step foot on the campus, you immediately get a sense of the sportiness of the students, who seem to be either coming or going from the gym or practice.
There are plenty of world-class athletic facilities right there, which play host to some pretty top competitions and are open to all students -- elite or otherwise.
The two largest and most popular programs at this campus are the BSc in Sport Management (managing events, volunteers, HR, etc.) and the BSc in Sports Media (how to tell the stories within sports).
All the sporting facilities also have cameras that link back to a control room and record performances for analysis (run by their performance analysis degree students), and they also have their own channel, Cardiff Met Sport TV.
Cardiff Met is also home to the NIAC (National Indoor Athletics Centre), the first purpose-built indoor athletics track in the UK.
The University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh is one of the UK’s six ancient universities, dating back to 1583.
In addition to teaching some of the greatest minds like Charles Darwin and Alexander Graham Bell, a number of sporting royalty have also graduated from Edinburgh, including track star Sir Chris Hoy (11 world titles and six Olympic gold medals) and Dame Katherine Grainger, Britain’s most successful female rower.
In fact, it even has its own Sports Hall of Fame.
Nowadays, its performance sports include swimming, men’s and women’s field hockey, men’s and women’s rugby, women’s basketball, fencing and rowing.
And in addition to having the largest Intramural Sport program in Scotland, Edinburgh also has some of the best facilities – the Pleasance Gym right in the city centre and the Peffermill Playing Fields, a couple miles outside the city.
At Peffermill, you’ll find nine premium artificial grass 5-a-side football pitches, multi-sport 3G artificial pitches for football, rugby and lacrosse as well as facilities for archery, cricket and track.
With two floodlit water based astroturf pitches, Peffermill is also home to the National Hockey Academy.
Uniquely, Peffermill is a nature-friendly zone, with plans to turn a 6-acre area of the site not being used as a playing field into wildflower meadows and grasslands.
Lastly, Edinburgh has also collaborated with an American company to deliver a new outdoor gym, the first of its kind in a UK or European higher education setting.
University of Bath
Sports are a big deal at the University of Bath, so much so that ‘Sport’ has its own heading on the university’s homepage.
In fact, its £35 million Sports Training Village is the centre of sports on campus, offering a 50-meter swimming pool, indoor tennis courts, sports hall, athletics tracks and more.
Ranked in the top 10 in the world for its degrees in Sports Science in the latest QS subject rankings, Bath also offers a ‘Dual Career Programme,’ which comes with a wide-range of benefits for students who are high achievers both academically and athletically.
Bath has been recognized for its high-quality research on this topic, as well as its commitment to gender equality.
For students that don't have the proper academic requirements to enter a degree at Bath, however, Bath also offers a 2-year foundation program in Sport for high-performing athletes, with the option to progress onto the final year of a degree upon completion.
A student's performance in sport forms part of the admissions process for this one.
Finally, most recently last November, Bath also achieved status as a UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre for helping Olympic and Paralympic athletes achieve their potential – one of eight UK universities to do so.
University of Nottingham
And no list of sporting universities in the UK would be complete without a reigning champion in its own right, the University of Nottingham.
Nottingham was recently named the Sports University of the Year in two national university league tables: The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024 and the Daily Mail University Guide.
It has invested more than £50 million in sports and fitness facilities over the last decade, including a recent £1.4 million refurbishment of the aquatic facilities at its flagship venue, the David Ross Sports Village.Â
Considered a top university for team sport, it also won 16 national titles and 43 league victories last season alone, and more than 50 of its students have represented the UK at senior international level in the last year.
But one of the best aspects of sport at Nottingham is its inclusivity; the support for students with disabilities and long-term medical conditions is sector-leading.
In fact, there is even a dedicated Disability Sport Officer to ensure students have the right support to stay active.
Another unique event is the Tri-Campus Games, where students from each of Nottingham’s three campuses (Nottingham, China and Malaysia) join together for a festival of sport and competition.Â
Lastly, Nottingham students also take sport to the community.
In the university’s Leadership Academy, student volunteers worked with more than 1,300 local school children last year to inspire them to try new sports.
Summary: Sports Universities in the UK
As you can see, you don’t necessarily have to attend a Russell Group university to have a rewarding social or competitive sport experience in the UK.
This list is certainly not exhaustive; there are plenty of other UK universities that are strong when it comes to studying or playing sports.
Every university will also have a different sporting focus, so if you’re looking to play competitively, it’s important to research and check the BUCS table and facilities for that particular sport to find the one for you -- in addition to teaching the subject you want to study.
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