UCL vc. KCL in LLM


Atakus

So am holding an offer from both and heavily in doubt.
I prefer KCL because I can do courses closer to my interests there (European & Commercial Law). However, does UCL have a considerably better reputation or not? It is ranked much higher on various international as well as UK rankings, where sometimes KCL is even 30 or so within the UK. Will this matter at all after my LLM? I mean: I can imagine that an employer will think "wow" if he sees Oxbridge in someone's CV and that this same thing will not happen with UCL or KCL. But will one have a more positive effect over the other or is it negligible?

So am holding an offer from both and heavily in doubt.
I prefer KCL because I can do courses closer to my interests there (European & Commercial Law). However, does UCL have a considerably better reputation or not? It is ranked much higher on various international as well as UK rankings, where sometimes KCL is even 30 or so within the UK. Will this matter at all after my LLM? I mean: I can imagine that an employer will think "wow" if he sees Oxbridge in someone's CV and that this same thing will not happen with UCL or KCL. But will one have a more positive effect over the other or is it negligible?
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Pluto

Between UCL and KCL the impact for an employer will be negligible. Go for the one that offers you the best courses in your field of interest.

Between UCL and KCL the impact for an employer will be negligible. Go for the one that offers you the best courses in your field of interest.
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glau912

Between UCL and KCL the impact for an employer will be negligible. Go for the one that offers you the best courses in your field of interest.


agree。
If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.
UCL and KCL's names are good enough to land you a good job in many International firms or institutions subject to your personal background and performance in interviews.

I notice that the average entry tariff of KCL's LLB has risen back to no.6 in 2011.

Aside from reputations, you may also want to use the knowledge and skills from what you learn. If you find KCL's courses are more practical and able to polish your skills as a lawyer in specailized areas, pick KCL.

<blockquote>Between UCL and KCL the impact for an employer will be negligible. Go for the one that offers you the best courses in your field of interest. </blockquote>

agree。
If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.
UCL and KCL's names are good enough to land you a good job in many International firms or institutions subject to your personal background and performance in interviews.

I notice that the average entry tariff of KCL's LLB has risen back to no.6 in 2011.

Aside from reputations, you may also want to use the knowledge and skills from what you learn. If you find KCL's courses are more practical and able to polish your skills as a lawyer in specailized areas, pick KCL.
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Good Gosh

i agree with the gist of the advice, but would underline that UCL is viewed as considerably better than KCL, and basically on a par with LSE. I'm doing my LLM at the LSE and in a way wish I were at UCL. that said, KCL is a good uni too, and if the courses there are particularly appealing then obviously go for it (that's why I went for the LSE..)

i agree with the gist of the advice, but would underline that UCL is viewed as considerably better than KCL, and basically on a par with LSE. I'm doing my LLM at the LSE and in a way wish I were at UCL. that said, KCL is a good uni too, and if the courses there are particularly appealing then obviously go for it (that's why I went for the LSE..)
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Atakus

Thank you for your replies.

The last post is entirely why this dilemma is so difficult for me. I didn't get into LSE or else I would have chosen that one in a heartbeat. The other universities I got into I am not considering because I view QMUL as significantly less than KCL or UCL and I want to be in London so Nottingham or Edinburgh aren't going to be it either.

Why I am still so much in doubt is because UCL does actually seem significantly better than KCL. The only problem is that I can't really make a coherent curriculum for myself there. I am guessing KCL should be the wiser option, but it just feels bad not going to a better university if you have the opportunity. I know KCL also is very good and has a reputation of it, but for example in the Guardian 2012 rankings they even dropped to 30 of the UK, and are 10 in Law.

I am interested in doing courses in mostly European & Company Law (no courses in UK Law) - would like to end up either in a EU institution, EU department of a member state or in inter-EU company law.

Thank you for your replies.

The last post is entirely why this dilemma is so difficult for me. I didn't get into LSE or else I would have chosen that one in a heartbeat. The other universities I got into I am not considering because I view QMUL as significantly less than KCL or UCL and I want to be in London so Nottingham or Edinburgh aren't going to be it either.

Why I am still so much in doubt is because UCL does actually seem significantly better than KCL. The only problem is that I can't really make a coherent curriculum for myself there. I am guessing KCL should be the wiser option, but it just feels bad not going to a better university if you have the opportunity. I know KCL also is very good and has a reputation of it, but for example in the Guardian 2012 rankings they even dropped to 30 of the UK, and are 10 in Law.

I am interested in doing courses in mostly European & Company Law (no courses in UK Law) - would like to end up either in a EU institution, EU department of a member state or in inter-EU company law.
quote
Interalia

If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.


Wasn't Edmund-Davis a Law Lord? And I'm pretty sure he did his LLB in KCL.

<blockquote>If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.
</blockquote>

Wasn't Edmund-Davis a Law Lord? And I'm pretty sure he did his LLB in KCL.
quote
Interalia

Why I am still so much in doubt is because UCL does actually seem significantly better than KCL. The only problem is that I can't really make a coherent curriculum for myself there. I am guessing KCL should be the wiser option, but it just feels bad not going to a better university if you have the opportunity. I know KCL also is very good and has a reputation of it, but for example in the Guardian 2012 rankings they even dropped to 30 of the UK, and are 10 in Law.


I disagree with this entirely. If you look at the faculty and the publications, I got no idea how on earth is UCL supposedly miles better than KCL. A lot of UCL's supposed star faculty - Penner, Mitchell, Chambers et al - actually just moved from KCL to UCL in the last few years! They are all ex KCL professors. Further, the movement is not one way. You don't just get KCL professors moving to UCL or oxbridge as they get more senior. It works the other way too. Jeremy Hodner has recently moved from oxford to KCL and he is an extremely big name, being a former law commissioner. Another example is Lord Plant - yes he is an actual British Lord - moving from oxford to KCL. My personal opinion is that the reality is the London Schools are more or less equal, with each having a distinct area of speciality. Even with LSE, I am less impressed with their commercial law faculty as compared to UCL. While I think LSE has the best human rights faculty of all the London Schools. Likewise, I think KCL has the best financial law faculty because of the presence of Ravi Tennekoon.

The problem with rankings such as the guardian is that the rankings are based on silly factors like how well you like the professors, how well you thought they taught etc. Really, in my opinion, rankings should only give weight to entry tariff, standard of research publications, percentage of the graduating cohort finding work in top firms and percentage of students going on to higher studies. I guarantee that if the rankings were based on these factors alone, KCL would not be dropping to 10 in law.

<blockquote>Why I am still so much in doubt is because UCL does actually seem significantly better than KCL. The only problem is that I can't really make a coherent curriculum for myself there. I am guessing KCL should be the wiser option, but it just feels bad not going to a better university if you have the opportunity. I know KCL also is very good and has a reputation of it, but for example in the Guardian 2012 rankings they even dropped to 30 of the UK, and are 10 in Law.
</blockquote>

I disagree with this entirely. If you look at the faculty and the publications, I got no idea how on earth is UCL supposedly miles better than KCL. A lot of UCL's supposed star faculty - Penner, Mitchell, Chambers et al - actually just moved from KCL to UCL in the last few years! They are all ex KCL professors. Further, the movement is not one way. You don't just get KCL professors moving to UCL or oxbridge as they get more senior. It works the other way too. Jeremy Hodner has recently moved from oxford to KCL and he is an extremely big name, being a former law commissioner. Another example is Lord Plant - yes he is an actual British Lord - moving from oxford to KCL. My personal opinion is that the reality is the London Schools are more or less equal, with each having a distinct area of speciality. Even with LSE, I am less impressed with their commercial law faculty as compared to UCL. While I think LSE has the best human rights faculty of all the London Schools. Likewise, I think KCL has the best financial law faculty because of the presence of Ravi Tennekoon.

The problem with rankings such as the guardian is that the rankings are based on silly factors like how well you like the professors, how well you thought they taught etc. Really, in my opinion, rankings should only give weight to entry tariff, standard of research publications, percentage of the graduating cohort finding work in top firms and percentage of students going on to higher studies. I guarantee that if the rankings were based on these factors alone, KCL would not be dropping to 10 in law.
quote
glau912

If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.


Wasn't Edmund-Davis a Law Lord? And I'm pretty sure he did his LLB in KCL.


So was Lord Justice Auld. :-D

<blockquote><blockquote>If you are not aiming at positions of Law Lords, you don't need to be an Oxbridge Graduate.
</blockquote>

Wasn't Edmund-Davis a Law Lord? And I'm pretty sure he did his LLB in KCL. </blockquote>

So was Lord Justice Auld. :-D
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Atakus

I guess you guys are right. The courses I will be choosing are also taught by more impressive professors (former professor at Cambridge, partner at Chase&White, etcetera).

The ony reason for my doubt are those stupid rankings. But it's a more substantial issue for me as well. I just _cannot_ understand that a university which is deemed as one of the top in the UK can be ranked number 30, below even Aberystwyth and whatnot. In terms of world rankings, my concern is similar but clearer: consistently, KCL is ranked lower (which is not a problem in itself) and UCL is always among the top, but inbetween them there are always a few other UK universities, meaning that KCL would be even worse than those others. It's difficult for me to grasp.

I know that I'm attaching too much value to the rankings but they must exist for a reason, right?

I guess you guys are right. The courses I will be choosing are also taught by more impressive professors (former professor at Cambridge, partner at Chase&White, etcetera).

The ony reason for my doubt are those stupid rankings. But it's a more substantial issue for me as well. I just _cannot_ understand that a university which is deemed as one of the top in the UK can be ranked number 30, below even Aberystwyth and whatnot. In terms of world rankings, my concern is similar but clearer: consistently, KCL is ranked lower (which is not a problem in itself) and UCL is always among the top, but inbetween them there are always a few other UK universities, meaning that KCL would be even worse than those others. It's difficult for me to grasp.

I know that I'm attaching too much value to the rankings but they must exist for a reason, right?
quote
Interalia

I guess you guys are right. The courses I will be choosing are also taught by more impressive professors (former professor at Cambridge, partner at Chase&White, etcetera).

The ony reason for my doubt are those stupid rankings. But it's a more substantial issue for me as well. I just _cannot_ understand that a university which is deemed as one of the top in the UK can be ranked number 30, below even Aberystwyth and whatnot. In terms of world rankings, my concern is similar but clearer: consistently, KCL is ranked lower (which is not a problem in itself) and UCL is always among the top, but inbetween them there are always a few other UK universities, meaning that KCL would be even worse than those others. It's difficult for me to grasp.

I know that I'm attaching too much value to the rankings but they must exist for a reason, right?


As i said before, the rankings take into account a lot of non-acdemic factors - student's happiness at the university, quality of social life etc - which have absolutely no relationship with how academicably able the university is. There is why a lot of universities can leapfrog KCL by viture of them having happier students for example, more accessable teachers etc.

Second thing is, KCL is a big university and not all the departments are uniformly good. Actually KCL is getting a lot of flank because of this because they're trying - but not succeeding - to improve their rankings by shuting down non-performing departments - i.e. departments not deemed world class. They closed down their chemistry department a few years back and last I heard they're thinking of doing it for engineering. My long winded point is that not all departments are equal within the same university and the less stellar departments will drag the overall university ranking down as has happened for KCL. KCL's law and medicine is still nonetheless regarded as one of the nation's best.

Lastly, I always had a problem with rankings. How do you rank academic performance without a common exam? Do you rank by the number of 1st class and what if one school is more lenient than others with regards to honours classification? Even with regards to research, a lot of research rankings is dependent on the number of faculty members who take part in the RAE. The greater the number of faculty members taking part, chances are the lesser the amount of world class research as a percentage of total faculty output. Personally, I find rankings next to useless. If work is what you're aiming for as a basis for doing the LLM, you're much better served by noting how the law firms percieve the schools (i.e. how they would rank the schools and the alumni networks within the law firms themselves) rather than some silly ranking by a newspaper .

<blockquote>I guess you guys are right. The courses I will be choosing are also taught by more impressive professors (former professor at Cambridge, partner at Chase&White, etcetera).

The ony reason for my doubt are those stupid rankings. But it's a more substantial issue for me as well. I just _cannot_ understand that a university which is deemed as one of the top in the UK can be ranked number 30, below even Aberystwyth and whatnot. In terms of world rankings, my concern is similar but clearer: consistently, KCL is ranked lower (which is not a problem in itself) and UCL is always among the top, but inbetween them there are always a few other UK universities, meaning that KCL would be even worse than those others. It's difficult for me to grasp.

I know that I'm attaching too much value to the rankings but they must exist for a reason, right?</blockquote>

As i said before, the rankings take into account a lot of non-acdemic factors - student's happiness at the university, quality of social life etc - which have absolutely no relationship with how academicably able the university is. There is why a lot of universities can leapfrog KCL by viture of them having happier students for example, more accessable teachers etc.

Second thing is, KCL is a big university and not all the departments are uniformly good. Actually KCL is getting a lot of flank because of this because they're trying - but not succeeding - to improve their rankings by shuting down non-performing departments - i.e. departments not deemed world class. They closed down their chemistry department a few years back and last I heard they're thinking of doing it for engineering. My long winded point is that not all departments are equal within the same university and the less stellar departments will drag the overall university ranking down as has happened for KCL. KCL's law and medicine is still nonetheless regarded as one of the nation's best.

Lastly, I always had a problem with rankings. How do you rank academic performance without a common exam? Do you rank by the number of 1st class and what if one school is more lenient than others with regards to honours classification? Even with regards to research, a lot of research rankings is dependent on the number of faculty members who take part in the RAE. The greater the number of faculty members taking part, chances are the lesser the amount of world class research as a percentage of total faculty output. Personally, I find rankings next to useless. If work is what you're aiming for as a basis for doing the LLM, you're much better served by noting how the law firms percieve the schools (i.e. how they would rank the schools and the alumni networks within the law firms themselves) rather than some silly ranking by a newspaper .
quote
thachikki

Hello everyone,

I have been accepted by UCL but I have a concern with regard to courses on EU Law that will be offered during 2011-12. There are many courses that are not running this year!!!!!!!! I am really concerned with this.

I have won a scholarships which requires from me to get a specialist degree in EU Law and therefore I will have to take only courses that are related to EU Law but the choice is so limited at the UCL. I wonder how good in UCL in EU Law courses? Does anyone have this information? How are the professors?

Thank you in advance :)

Hello everyone,

I have been accepted by UCL but I have a concern with regard to courses on EU Law that will be offered during 2011-12. There are many courses that are not running this year!!!!!!!! I am really concerned with this.

I have won a scholarships which requires from me to get a specialist degree in EU Law and therefore I will have to take only courses that are related to EU Law but the choice is so limited at the UCL. I wonder how good in UCL in EU Law courses? Does anyone have this information? How are the professors?

Thank you in advance :)

quote
Atakus

I decided to go for the KCL LLM for that reason. UCL simply cancelled too many relevant courses.

Also, it seems that the most renowned professors that are being named on this forum that teach at UCL are in different fields. The ones in European Law don't have very impressive CV's and joined the faculty mostly in the past 5 years from what I can see, while the KCL professors are more experienced and have better records. Then again, I am just a prospective LLM student so I might not be 100% right, but that was the reason I didn't go for UCL (them being weak on paper in European Law).

I decided to go for the KCL LLM for that reason. UCL simply cancelled too many relevant courses.

Also, it seems that the most renowned professors that are being named on this forum that teach at UCL are in different fields. The ones in European Law don't have very impressive CV's and joined the faculty mostly in the past 5 years from what I can see, while the KCL professors are more experienced and have better records. Then again, I am just a prospective LLM student so I might not be 100% right, but that was the reason I didn't go for UCL (them being weak on paper in European Law).
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thachikki

Thank you for such a fast response.

I have never applied to KCL. I only applied to UCL in UK, but I have applied in KULeuven in Belgium and hear that they are far more excellent in EU Law. This is my dilemma: to chose UCL or KULeuven. I like UCL because it is in London and it is a UK Institution which is highly ranked but for my area of expertise - EU Law I feel they are a little behind whereas KULeuven has professors that serve as permanent judges in courts.

I hope to find out more about UCL-s quality on EU Law courses, this will help me decide definitely, but as you said their CV-s do not seem to be as impressive as in some other faculties therefore I am a little concerned.

Thank you again ..

Thank you for such a fast response.

I have never applied to KCL. I only applied to UCL in UK, but I have applied in KULeuven in Belgium and hear that they are far more excellent in EU Law. This is my dilemma: to chose UCL or KULeuven. I like UCL because it is in London and it is a UK Institution which is highly ranked but for my area of expertise - EU Law I feel they are a little behind whereas KULeuven has professors that serve as permanent judges in courts.

I hope to find out more about UCL-s quality on EU Law courses, this will help me decide definitely, but as you said their CV-s do not seem to be as impressive as in some other faculties therefore I am a little concerned.

Thank you again ..
quote

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