Summary: Preference decisions will usually depend on the characteristics of both the judges und the objects being juded. In the analysis of paired comparison data concerning European universities and students’ characteristics, it is demonstrated how to incorporate subject-specific information into Bradley-Terry-type models. Using this information it is shown that preferences for universities and therefore university rankings are dramatically different for different groups of students. A log-linear representation of a generalized Bradley-Terry model is specified which allows simultaneous modelling of subject- and object-specific covariates and interactions between them. A further advantage of this approach is that standard software for fitting log-linear models, such as GLIM, can be used.