Legal _India
Take it easy and calm down; it seems to be that you are taking things personally in a very weird way, and believe me Im not trying to make you change your position against Manchester, I just want to be sure that prospective students have all the necessary information that they need before making their minds up. Ive been accepted by UCL, KCL, Durham, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Nottingham (not Nottingham Trent), and if you really want my objective opinion, I think that among these universities UCL and KCL are the best, Durham is an excellent university but in my opinion they do not have a lot of modules to choose among them (only 13 or 14), so I chose Manchester and I dont regret this choice; why? If you dont want to accept well-known rankings such as the times (Nottingham Trent is n° 43!!) or the guardian (NTU n° 36 and Manchester is n° 12) because you say that these ranking are only for undergraduate then lets take the RAE.
What is the RAE 2001?
The main purpose of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is to enable the higher education funding bodies to distribute public funds for research selectively on the basis of quality. Institutions conducting the best research receive a larger proportion of the available grant so that the infrastructure for the top level of research in the UK is protected and developed. The RAE assesses the quality of research in universities and colleges in the UK. It takes place every four to five years and the next exercise will be held in 2001. Around £5 billion of research funds will be distributed in response to the results of the 2001 RAE.
http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/AboutUs/
If you consult this web site you will see that that the University of Manchester was attributed 5A while NTU was 4F; this is official, concrete, and I think very objective.
Also and form my small experience (I have other postgraduate diplomas from other European universities) I can say that the standards here at Manchester are really very good, why? Because we have excellent prophesiers such as John Birds, Asif Qureshi,.etc ( you can compare between the staffs), most of the time we have small classes (not more than 20 max), very helpful administrative staff, excellent library which is a very important element for a postgraduate student)
I would be more than happy to provide you with any additional information or explications you need.
Take care

Hi Manchester

You are certainly correct that the RAE is an excellent guide to objectivlely assessing the research reputation and funding of law schools but can I suggest that you look at the new results which came out last December in the RAE 2008. There have been some significant changes. Take a look at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-results-2008-law-degree

Dear snottypie
Thank you for this valuable information, but can you explain what we should take in consideration to assess which university is the best (the FTE Category A staff submitted, Average ranking or any other criteria) but in all cases the results seems to confirm what I said before that Manchester is way ahead Nottingham Trent university.
Thanks

Dear Manchester

I think that the RAE is quite complicated (and much more so than in the 2001 assessment when we were at least able to see a 5*, 5A etc ranking, but FTE means Full Time Equivallent (ie number of FTE staff equals full and part time staff so sometimes there is a .5). In order to understand the RAE fully you should understand the methodology (which can be found on the RAE website) and armed with this information,look at what the Schools that interest you say about their RAE return. I would look for a School that returned all its academic staff rather than just a handful of Professors. Also, I would look for International excellence since most LLM programmes claim to be international in nature. Also look at the Research Fortnight's guides which indicate the "power rankings" (sorry don't have the website to hand but will look it up if you can't fid it). I think that if you take the two together you will get a pretty good indication of how Schools rank. For example, currently LSE, UCL, Oxford, Durham, Nottingham (University of, not NLS which is part of Nottingham Trent), Kent, Cardiff and Belfast come ahead of Cambridge in the RAE, which may seem bizarre. The Power Rankings place them in the following order - Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Nottingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Queen Mary's, Kings College and Kent. As always, these act as excellent guides, but not definitive lists.

Well this is for Manchester supporters ....!
I had been arguing that Manchester comes close to Kent in its ranking...!
Now the New Complete University Guide ranks Manchester at 22nd and Kent at 23rd place..!
And Glasgow has been upgraded to the 6th place!

I was telling you that Manchester is falling in its standards...And I think I was partially right about it.

Hey Legal_India,
which univeristy have u finally decided to head to?

Hello Anushka !
I was going to go with City University since i liked it the most in terms of practising as a Solicitor in UK later on in my career...but I was waiting for UCL and LSE's response...! And yesterday I received a conditional offer (condition = 55% in my LLB) from UCL...so it obvious that I decide to go to UCL....

but admittedly, I had long back sent my "decline offer" letter to Manchester, NTU, Kent, Birmingham, etc... !
I was going to pay my deposit at City University in the next week...but luckily UCL has responded positively.

Saying that NTU or City is better than Manchester is crazy!

I don't think they dropped the standards. They have a smart approach. They accept people and know that only about 30-40% will register.

It is a leading law school in the UK and NTU and City do not come close to Manchester. Why does Linklaters and other leading firms would bother targeting Manchester?

Is NTU or City a Russel Group University? I don't think so.!
Bashing Manchester because of their acceptance rate is not logical.