till recently i was happy as I had secured admission to King's College London and I was all pumped about an LLM in competition law from King's. But just yesterday I got an offer from UC Berkeley who had earlier put me on the waiting list. My intended course is a specialization in competition law. But now I dont know which college to choose, King's or Berkeley. Any suggestions or ideas??

King's has a wonderful competition law program with amazing professors experts in the field (as I am sure you know). Berkeley I have not heard so much in the discipline but I would dare say that it has a better reputation in terms of name than King's worldwide. Therefore, I personally think it would come down to where you see yourself practicing. If it is the UK then I would definitely go for King's. If it is somewhere else in the world (esp US) I think Berkeley would marginally win me over.

Hey thanks a lot! finally some sound advice. Really appreciate it Freckles! I had posted the same query on the UK discussion board and its somehow turned into a King's bashing session :)

Hehe well I am not one to speak as I have Oxbridge in my past days but King's has the leading experts in Competition law right now in the UK as a group. Surely you can find people like Whetherill at Oxford, Greaves at Glagow, Arrowsmith (if you're into piblic procurement) at Nottingham who are fantastic but King's with Whish, Jones, Biondi, Llewelyn is taking it to another level. I hear the center is great and now that the law school had finally moved to Somerset House it finally has a great venue.

I would however consider one point. However not a King's (or competition law for that matter) expert I know they have both a LLM and a MA in EU Comp Law. If you have been admitted to do the LLM then my previous thoughts stand. On the other hand if you have been admitted to do the MA then the different bearing of the two degrees would come into play as well.

i've been admitted to the LLM in King's. So i will keep your previous thoughts in mind.

For competition law, King's wins hands down. There is no other university I know that can rival King's in that field - you have Whish, Jones, and Bailey, plus Biondi and Eeckhout for European law (and many other great professors). The Centre of European Law has regular conferences and talks given by visiting professors and leading practitioners. I went to KCL for the LLM and loved it.

I'm now doing a 2nd LLM in the US - at Georgetown - in order to become eligible to take the NY Bar exam and to gain expertise in WTO and international economic law, which I discovered at King's and now want to delve much deeper.

I am not aware of what the strength of Berkeley's faculty in competition law but perhaps one solution is for you to do BOTH the KCL and Berkeley LLMs if you can't decide? Obviously, if you are an overseas student (i.e. non-EU), KCL will charge more (something like 13K GBP), but that doesn't even compare to the cost of Berkeley.

I was lucky enough to have a scholarship to attend King's, which made my decision really easy. Do you have some financial aid from Berkeley?

hey thanks for the advice. nope i dont have any financial aid from Berkeley. What I can probably do is do the King's LLM right now and work for a few years, earn some money and then do Berkeley. Lets see. and yes I am an overseas student and my tuition fee is almost 14K GBP.