So, someone below listed their issues with Aberdeen University. Well, guys, it's now 2020 and....not much has changed.

Where to start? I'll start with the same thing they started with- accommodation.

What accommodation? I was told ahead of time that on-campus housing was for undergrads only. As the previous poster said, buffoons. This, I later found out, was not correct.

That's merely the beginning of how incompetently things are run here. I spent much of my time stressing out over my Tier-4 Visa status, as classmates from the School of Social Sciences were routinely sent updates regarding check-ins and other information. The Law School? Good luck. Deadlines came and went with no contact. Thankfully, a classmate from another school sent me theirs and I used that to suffice- or, I wasn't kicked out of the UK at least so there's that.

Have a question about a deadline? Do not ask your instructor. They won't know. They will give you a random date with a 99.9% likelihood of changing at the last minute.

The Law School seems to have an institutional issue with professionalism in general. Feedback often took hard slants towards personalized insults, instructors routinely showed up late and disorganized, classes were often run well over time- which would have been a bonus had there been instruction going on. Most instructors were more interested in pontificating their personal opinions rather than offering objective legal education, and given that this was an LLM program (I can't speak for the LLB instructors, maybe they're great), the professors seemed entirely unaware that many of the international students carried degrees equal to, or even superior to, their own. Some students were active practitioners in their home countries. And many agreed that there were times where instruction wasn't just inadequate, but fundamentally flawed in terms of legal reasoning. I've never questioned the quality of education I received, from my Associate's degree all the way through my Juris Doctorate. But here, I have. What could and should have been a great experience with attorneys from around the world and a professor specialized in a particular field turned into a battle of wills between professionals who are far too credentialed to be spoken down to. I would expect those teaching LLM courses to be cognizant about their students (particularly the international ones) not being a bunch of incels running around they can lord over by virtue of a traditonal teacher-student dynamic. Egos aside, it's a disservice to have so many different legal backgrounds in one room only to be controlled by overly pedantic instructors disinterested in any opinions other than their own. That's not a good, objective legal education, and we all know that.

The dissertation session was set up to be haphazard from the get-go. The session was supposed to run from May to August, but they randomly start demanding things in early March, just in time to pile on the load from other classes. You're allotted a grand total of 1 hour's worth of dissertation oversight. To me, that seems incredibly absurd when it's divided between 3 meetings and your first is mostly a meet-and-greet session. It doesn't help that we were also given the wrong forms by the Law School, so the first meeting was 1/3 of allotted time wasted.

There were some bonuses though. My dissertation supervisor is an incredible person and one of the few people I can look back at my time at Aberdeen and say was actually up to speed with what he was supposed to be doing.

I also had classes from the School of Social Sciences as my LLM program covered International Law and International Relations. Every instructor, administrator, and support staff in this department is fantastic, approachable, knowledgeable, and offer constructive feedback. I would recommend it to anyone seeking a Master's in International Relations, Strategic Studies, Political Science, etc.

The Law School, however, is none of that. It felt like they were content with simply taking my higher tuition fee and forgetting I was there. If you're looking for an LLM program, particularly if you've already gone to law school and are looking to specialize, do yourself a favour and look elsewhere. The biggest red flag in hindsight is that I did not meet a single student who went to Aberdeen for their LLB that stayed for an LLM. If you can't attract your own law students, that's not a good sign.

[Edited by therealvanwilder2020 on May 01, 2020]