I have got conditional offer letters from all of the above mentioned universities.Its been an mind numbing process to decide which university because all of the different ranking tables say different things.I want to pursue COMMERCIAL LAW or INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW.what is the best amongst these please reply as i am meeting the deadline for acceptance for some of them.

Hi. Great offers youve got there, huh?

Im not going to consider Southampton here because I dont reckon much to its law school, at least not from a foreigner perspective. Someone from within the UK might have a different opinion.

First of all, I think youve got to make up your mind about the specialisation you want, cause that will certainly impact your decision.

For instance, if you go with commercial law, in spite of my affection towards Aberdeen, Id say you must choose between Nottingham and Queen Mary.

Allow me to explain: most LLM prospective students are after a common law degree. Taking into consideration Nottingham and Queen Mary are in England (common law), whereas Aberdeen is in Scotland (mixed jurisdiction), I would say Nottingham and Queen Mary seem to be cleverest choice. You need to consider in the decision making process one additional factor: University of London. Queen Mary may not be the highest brand among UoL colleges, but its nevertheless a UoL college. This fact alone brings along a very strong reputation.

Additionally, you must take account of the following factors whilst you think this through: cost (London is more expensive than Nottingham, be it tuition fees or living expenses) and population (London has millions of people moving around, whereas Nottingham is a much less crowded place though it is not a small city).

Bottom line, I would vote in favour of Nottingham.

Im sorry but thats all Ive got. Apart from the remarks above, I really cant work out a formula for you to toss one or the other aside.

Just one note: If you aint worried about whether you get a common law or mixed jurisdiction degree, Id tell you to take up Aberdeens offer. Great university and great law school. And even though Ive never been there, I fell in love with the place just by looking at the pictures on the web and wandering about in the streets using Google Maps.

Now, if you choose the IP path, I reckon you will inevitably rule out all the universities, except for Queen Mary. So your decision wouldnt be so tough after all in that scenario.

well 1st of all thanks a lot for your inputs.
It is still unclear for me to make a definitive choice.
I would love for some more help please.
i have one more university to add to the problem its the university of glasgow.

Hey harsh_urxlnc..
Go for University of London college, i.e. QM. In UK, after Oxford and Cambridge, there comes UOL colleges: LSE,UCL,SOAS,KCL,and QM. All the best with your selection.
Cheerio

To be honest, within the UK QMUL and SOAS, despite being colleges of the University of London, are not held in the same level of esteem as UCL, LSE and Kings. There are non-London law schools that are more reputable. Nottingham would be one of them.

One last call
Nottingham or Queen Marys?

Between those two, I think I would go with Nottingham.

In terms of reputation I'd go with Nottingham. Here are some facts:
Nottingham's law faculty is ranked 4th in the UK by the recent Times ranking and it is ranked 5th in the UK by the recent Complete University Guide. If you are sceptical about rankings just have a look at how governmental agencies assess the University of Nottingham: according to the Research Assessment Exercise 2008, 30% of research in law at the University of Nottingham received the highest rating of 4 (compare that to Oxford which has 35 % and Cambridge which has 25% of research in the same category). Also, the funding concil allocated to the University of Nottingham almost 24% more funds in 2009-2010; it's the biggest increase in funding any English university had received in 2009-2010.

lawstudent2010

I totally agree with lawstudent2010.

But I do point out something that I even wrote on my previous post to this thread: if youre planning on pursuing a career at some law firm back in your home country (assuming youre not from the UK), its very much more likely that recruiters over thereve heard of Queen Mary before, whereas Nottingham will sound utterly strange to them

I dont condone this sort of thinking but that is how things would turn out to be at least in my country. So I just reckon you ought to think this through if you want to stave off making the wrong decision.

beicon, there is certaily a grain of truth in what you say.
I'm myself from continental Europe and I don't think that many recruiters here have heard about Queen Mary but if you can claim that you've graduated from the University of London, that probably would be a name many recruiters outside the UK would be familiar with.
It may differ from country to country, but viewed globally Nottingham certainly belongs to the better known British universities. For example, it regularly appears among the top 100 universities worldwide in major international rankings and it has major campuses in China and Malaysia.

lawstudent2010