Hi all!

I graduated from a top university in Hong Kong with first class honours. However, I have to say my 1st is a weak one. My performance in my first year wasn't great. I don't have a class ranking but I don't think I'm in the top 5-10%.

On my CV, I have some academic research experience, various internships at local law firms, and some experience in human rights related work.

I would be grateful if you guys can offer me some advice on my chances of getting into the LLM programmes at these top schools.

It seems unlikely that I can get into Oxford BCL or Harvard LLM, given that BCL explicitly requires a "good" first class and Harvard weighs class ranking heavily.

While I'm sure it is also very difficult to get into Cambridge, people have told me that you can get into Cambridge LLM with a very high 2:1. Is that true?

I don't have much information about Colombia except that it ranks 4th/5th within US.

NYU seems to be a realistic choice for me, due to its large class size...

What do you guys think? Thanks!

I think that "Colombia" is actually spelled with a "u".

Eppendorf you're right. My bad.

I think it's really hard to say what's going to fly with the admissions committees, because standards and competitiveness can fluctuate from year to year. In general, I think that a weak first class is not always a dealbreaker especially since you have some interesting experience that might help set you apart from other applicants.

As for Columbia, it's a great school and it seems that they value applicants with practical experience:

Strong preference is given to applicants who have had at least one year of work experience after earning their first law degree.