I am a fresh LLB graduate, just completed a year of exchange at Duke Law School and am now working in a U.S. government branch at the Washington DC.

I got accepted into LSE and UCL, which I would choose LSE over UCL. Sadly, I didn't get an offer from Cambridge.*sigh*

Now I have several courses of actions open to me, I wonder if any one can give advice on what I should do:

1. defer the LSE admission by a year, and do the bar exam equivalent (PCLL) in Hong Kong, get a better academic record and apply to Cambridge again next year. If I don't get Cambridge, go for LSE next year.

2. go straightly to LSE LLM, choose all the writings courses which I am extremely strong at (somehow I'm not good at taking exams no matter how hard I try), and get an excellent academic record in order to apply for SJD in the US.

3. Give up the idea of having an LLM in the UK. Make use of my time to publish as widely as possible. (But publishing chances won't come unless you have postgrad education - oh gosh!) And qualify as a barrister in DoJ in Hong Kong and then apply for LLM in the US with a view to doing a further SJD.

My goals:

Have 1-2 years of working experience to confirm what field I am most passionate for, then do an LLM and SJD in the best school I can get in the US (Yale is my dream school, followed by Harvard). In the long run, I want to be an cutting edge professor in public law (specialising in legal theory, comparative and international law, administrative and con law), and I definitely love the US style of education more than the UK style. However, I applied for UK qualification coz is highly regarded in my home Hong Kong. I know an UK LLM wouldn't hurt and would only help an US LLM application in the future, and the US LLM naturally leads to SJD in the same school.

Several questions that are so important to me linger in my mind:

1. What chance would I stand to have a successful deferral at the LSE if my main reason is to get rid of the Hong Kong bar exam ASAP, in order to do a PhD at LSE? My supplemental reason is an extra year to arrange for funding.

2. Having 3 LLM experience in one lifetime might be more than necessary (Duke exchange + UK LLM + US LLM) - I wonder if I should decisively skip the UK LLM afterall, but I know right now I don't have a sufficiently strong academic record to get into my dream schools in the US, so I wanna build up something in LSE. My strength is in extra curricular involvements and internship experience. These are weighed more in the US than in the UK.

3. How is the prospect of an academic career like in the LSE? LSE has great international prestige and is well know in the US - but to what extent does it apply for an academic career?

Thanks for reading the comments of a perplexted young lady, and Thanks in advance for your helpful comments.

By the way, I will get a high second upper class honours. (Top 25% of the LLB class) I can't help wondering what more opportunities I would get if I get a first class. Well, maybe in the legal field, nothing can replace a solid top transcript.

Your thoughts are complicated, to be honest.
For me, there is only one major issue here - field of legal specialization.

The LSE and the UCL are both excellent schools. BUT, UCL offers more legal specializations and excellent training in each of them. It is older than LSE and excels in law. LSE excels more in the social sciences.

You must therefore know what is your desired career path.
If you wish to work in the US, then you must study in the US because your courses would be taught mostly based on the law of the land (jurisdictional). Hence, contract law in the US would not be the same as contract law under British law since the legal systems are different, especially if you intend to be admitted to a particular legal practice (for example, US BAR).

Once you have decided on your career path, then the choice of school would be clear to you.

I definitely love the US style of education more than the UK style.