The University of Sussex has dropped two places in the Independent newspaper's Complete University Guide, published today (24 April), despite improving its overall score by 24 points.

Sussex is placed 21st overall, and third in the south-east (behind Oxford and Southampton), in the 2012-13 guide to 116 higher education institutions.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Farthing, said: “Over the last five years we have seen a clear and consistent increase in our rankings across all league tables as a whole – with other national guides placing us firmly in the top 20 overall.

“The differences between the leading institutions as measured by the Complete University Guide are very slight – just a handful of points out of 800 or more can mean a rise or fall of two or three places.

“But higher education is a tough, competitive world. While we’ve improved significantly in recent years, this latest league table shows that we need to continue to focus on the quality of teaching and research at Sussex and - as a result - do even better in the rankings.”

This year's guide ranks Sussex in the top 10 nationally in nine subject areas, compared with 12 last year (2011-12).

Social Work has risen one place to fourth in the country, while American Studies has dropped one to fourth and Media Studies has held steady at fifth. History of Art, Architecture and Design enters the top five this year (up from 6^th).

The other top 10 subjects are: Anthropology (8^th); Drama, Dance and Cinematics (10^th); Italian (6^th); Physics and Astronomy (9^th); and Psychology (8^th).

Subjects appearing in the top 20 are: Chemistry (18^th); History (17^th); Law (20^th); Philosophy (13^th); Politics (16^th); and Sociology (13^th).

Subjects inside the top 25 include: Biological Sciences (22^nd); English (22^nd); Geography and Environmental Science (25^th); Music (22^nd); Iberian Languages (24^th); and Mathematics (24^th).

Philosophy, Anthropology, History of Art, Italian, Law, Philosophy, Politics (including International Relations) and Social Work have all improved on their 2012 rankings.

The guide ranks universities across nine measures including student satisfaction, quality of research and graduate prospects.

Sussex has improved in both performance and ranking for three of these: graduate prospects, academic services and facilities spend.