St Andrews has been named The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year in The Sunday Times University Guide 2008, published with the newspaper tomorrow.

It heads the guide’s league table of Scottish universities and is fifth overall in the UK, one place higher than last year. It thus completes a hat trick of Sunday Times University Guide awards. Its consistently excellent performance across all areas earned the institution the UK University of the Year title in 2002, the Scottish University of the Year title in 2006, and it wins the latter award again this year.

Runner up for Scottish University of the Year - and top modern Scottish university - is Aberdeen's Robert Gordon, which boasts the same remarkable level of leavers getting graduate-level jobs - a key measure used in judging this year's winners - as Cambridge.

Most degree courses at St Andrews last four years, allowing students to study one or two subjects alongside their chosen degree course in the first two years before specialising in the final two. This broad and flexible curriculum sees a high proportion (83.2%) of students leave with a 2:1 or first class degree, and graduate unemployment is low at 4.7%.

The university boasts a wide range of subjects rated excellent, 14 in total, and a teaching excellence score of 66.7%. Students couldn’t be much happier. Only five universities have higher student satisfaction scores than St Andrews’ 83.7%, with history and archeology (88.5%) and sociology and anthropology (88.3%) students the most satisfied of all. The dropout rate is low (5.5% and below funding council expectations), and applications are high at nearly eight per place, allowing the university to have its pick of the brightest students.

The Robert Gordon University (RGU) was a hot contender for the Scottish University of the Year title, not least because a degree from RGU is almost a guarantee of employment. Within six months of leaving, 97.7% of graduates are working or getting stuck into further study. And the vast majority gain graduate-level jobs, the 87.1% who achieve this bettered only by the London School of Economics and Imperial College London.

The goal of a graduate job is never out of sight, with nine out of 10 undergraduate courses involving a work placement. Strong links with business mean courses are structured around industry needs, so graduates are well prepared for the world of work.

Over the next ten years, RGU will spend £150m on its facilities in Aberdeen, and the institution is keen that students from all backgrounds should benefit from such investment. The university has entered into a formal alliance with Aberdeen College, underlining its commitment to widening access to higher education.

The University of Edinburgh, ranked 15th in the Sunday Times UK university league table this year (and second in the Scottish table), remains a very popular choice among school leavers, academics and head teachers alike. The number of applications is the third highest in the country. The 45,000-plus who applied this year translates into about 11 applications per place.

Edinburgh achieves the highest scores in Scotland for the Sunday Times University Guide’s exclusive survey of academics and head teachers. More than 2,200 academics were asked to rate departments in their subject field at other universities. They ranked just five institutions higher than Edinburgh for the quality of undergraduate provision. Head teachers hold the institution in similarly high esteem, voting Edinburgh into the top 10 universities.

How Scotland's universities rank (with UK ranking in brackets):

1 St Andrews (5)

2 Edinburgh )15)

3 Glasgow (31)

4 Aberdeen (34)

5 Dundee (36)

6 Stirling (42)

7 Strathclyde (43)

8 Heriot-Watt (44)

9 Robert Gordon (62)

10 Glasgow Caledonian (81)

11 Queen Margaret (83)

12 Napier (95)

13 Abertay Dundee (102)

The Sunday Times University Guide 2008 provides students and their parents with an invaluable first reference point on the path 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, ratings from head teachers’ and academic peer review, entrance qualifications held by new students, degree results achieved, student/staff ratios, graduate unemployment levels and university dropout rates.

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