Hello everybody,

Seeking some advice on where else to apply. Have gained a conditional offer from Nottingham for 2007 and just wonder what other universities I should try. Now, obviously I don't want to go down, so what universities would be "better" (prestige wise because i'm sure Nott has an education as good as any other).

I was thinking: Oxford, Cambridge (obvious I know), LSE, UCL, Kings, Queen Mary, Edinburgh, (maybe Durham?)... that's where I draw the line. What about you?

Your opinions would help me a great deal because although all UK universities offer great courses, prestige is something that I think is important for an international LLM.

Thankyou kindly for any replies and I wish you all well in your applications and studies. (That is, if the World Cup is not taking you away from them!!!).

wow you already started applying for 2007 !!!

cong. for nottingham's offer , you guranteed a good place for LLM

try to apply to some of those ... Manchester , Glasgow , Bristol

Aberdeen might be intersting for some ...

and as you mentioned .. Oxford , Cambridge , the london's , Durham and Edinburgh are all good

I think those are more than enough with your nottinghams offer you dont need anything lower than that

Thanks for that Anoos, always good to hear a different opinion.

Where do you think Durham would stand? I prefer Nottingham but know it has a good rep. Will look into Bristol - thanks.

And ... i'm sorry I can't resist - did anyone see that Australian come back against Japan? I watched that game into the early morning and had my heart in my mouth up until the 84th minute. 3 goals thereafter in 6 minutes to take the win!

I would say that the only places far above Nottingham are Cambridge, Oxford and LSE. KCL, QM, UCL and Edinburgh are probably on a par or slightly above but may offer more subjects. Nottingham has a great reputation and most importantly the impression I get is of a wholly student focused program with lots of chances to undertake cv enhancing things.

Thanks for your opinion Yellow. Glad to see the opinions overseas are the same as here in my country.

Nottingham also has a great reputation in Australia and, according to my US Ivy trained professor, is behind LSE, UCL, King's, and, of course, Oxford and Cambridge.

I just wanted to check that Nottingham has the same sort of reputation actually in Europe or UK.

Appreciated.

and what do u think about Trinity College Dublin? How is it considered?

just as information

thankx

and concerning Nottingham, i can say that in Italy is not very considered... i think maybe because of we don't really know the british universities...by the way the London's are very well appreciated according to Italian recruiters.

Hi Marco,

This would be expected as Italy is a civil law system. For example, in Australia, given that we are common law, most have never heard of Leiden, Utrecht, Leuven despite that they are the best schools around in Europe. So naturally we look to UK, USA and Canada and I can understand the motivations of recruiters in Italy in that regard because the London colleges are just world class.

On trinity - it has a fantastic reputation. However, the general view is that top schools from the UK, USA or Canada are preferable simply because of the common law factor and that they are "known". TCD has a huge amount of pretige but upon asking afew professors, they did not consider it a good place to go as an Australian law student.

Depends on jurisdiction. It is just deemed better to gain instruction in, say, English or American law.

Out of curiosity, why are Durham and Trinity College ranked so poorly in the international rankings? They clearly have huge prestige.

Nottingham law school enjoys a good reputation (somewhere in the top 10 I would say) and competition for places is quite fierce, atleast for the undergrad course. I believe it is particularly strong in public international law.

As for the global rankings... I would not read too much into them! It is difficult enough to compile a 'league table' for universities in one country, but to do so for different universities throughout the world, regardless of the different systems and government policies towards them surely has the potential to be erroneous and misleading. In whichever 'international ranking' league table you are looking at, the reason Durham and TCD do not fair well may be because they are medium-sized universities containing e.g. 10,000 students, instead of a place like Manchester univ or Nottingham, which have 20,000 plus. With more students, one may deduce that more income is being generated by the univ and spending on research etc is greater.

However, this emphasis on 'quantity' ignores quality- Durham Univ, although small compared to Manchester or Nott, concentrates on certain core subjects which it maintains at a high standard- law being one of them. Basically, bigger does not necessarily mean better... After all, you are going to study only one of the degrees on offer at a university, so it is better to look at the reputation the university has for that particular course, and then look at the reputation of the entire university as a secondary matter,
My two cents atleast.