NTU has a gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework and is among the leading universities for the number of students on year-long work placements. Most courses include placements of at least four weeks and a dedicated employment team can help students to find international opportunities to study or work. A specialist project officer helps students with money management and budgeting. There is extra support for care leavers and estranged students, as well as mandatory consent awareness training for all new students.

Research has not been neglected as the university focuses on the student experience. NTU rises 26 places in our research quality index, based on improved results in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) compared with the previous national assessment in 2014. Eighty-three per cent of NTU’s work was rated world-leading or internationally excellent, the top two categories. Law, engineering and allied health, dentistry, nursing and pharmacy were the top performers, each with at least 98 per cent of their submissions rated in the top two categories.

The main City campus is close to the centre of Nottingham and is the academic base for about half of NTU’s students. The Clifton campus, just outside the city, houses the arts and humanities, and science and technology, as well as the Nottingham Institute of Education, while the Brackenhurst campus is a countryside estate 14 miles from Nottingham, where environmental and agricultural courses are based. The Lyth Building, a new headquarters for the School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences, won the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) East Midlands Award in 2022.

NTU has been branching out across the East Midlands, with NTU in Mansfield offering foundation degrees and other qualifications in partnership with Vision West Nottinghamshire College. Subjects include business, computing, education and sport and exercise science. Construction and engineering courses will take their first students this month. The university also has plans to open a health campus in Worksop, run with Bassetlaw Hospital and the University of Derby. It is already offering a Higher National Certificate in future homes design and construction in the town.

In Nottingham, a new building for the School of Art and Design is scheduled to open in 2023. The university has already spent £23 million on the new Medical Technologies Innovation Facility (MTIF), and the Dryden Enterprise Centre, which provided facilities and support to start-ups and more established companies, opened in 2021. At the Clifton campus, the Health and Allied Professions Centre opened in 2022, providing facilities for specialist courses such as adult and mental health nursing, paramedic science and public health.

Six degrees starting in September 2022 include early childhood studies, criminal justice and climate change. Three more education degrees are due to follow in 2023, one focusing on special education needs, disability and inclusion. By then, the university expects to have 2,000 students on its 21 degree apprenticeship programmes, which include provision for hygiene specialists for the first time in 2022-23.

The prospects at the end of an NTU degree are improving. In our analysis based on the proportion of graduates in highly skilled jobs or on postgraduate courses 15 months later, the university has climbed 19 places to rank joint 74th.

NTU’s system of contextual offers, which lowers A-level requirements for eligible applicants by up to two grades, is beginning to have an impact on social inclusion on campus. Almost a third of all undergraduates benefit from a range of bursaries and scholarships. NTU co-leads the National Social Mobility Research Centre, although it remains in the bottom half of our social inclusion ranking for England and Wales (88th).

NTU has a strong sporting reputation, breaking into the Bucs (British Universities and Colleges Sport) top ten for the first time this year. There are facilities on every campus, including a purpose-built equestrian centre at Brackenhurst and the multipurpose Lee Westwood Sports Centre, which includes two large sports halls and a 65-station gym, at Clifton. Social life varies between campuses but the city’s lively cultural and clubbing scene is in reach, wherever you are.

There is residential accommodation on every campus, and most of the 6,200 rooms owned or endorsed by NTU are reserved for new entrants. They may book as soon as they have a firm offer of a place and are guaranteed accommodation if they apply by mid-June. International students have until the end of July.