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UCL law offer holders 2015/16 entry

Hi everybody :smile: Couldn't find a thread exclusively for this so starting a new one. Just wanted to meet everyone who's been offered a place at UCL law for entry this year :biggrin: I'll start, I'm Tilly! :wavey:

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Reply 1
I'm Dan and I got an unconditional offer from NZ. Don't know anyone so yet, so hi Tilly
University College London, University of London
University College London
London
Hey Dan! I have a conditional offer but it's only IELTS so I should be fine :biggrin: Do you think you're going to accept UCL as your firm offer?
Reply 3
Already accepted it, and booked the flight. Are you international too?
Great! I've firmed it as well, very excited! Yes I'm international - from Hong Kong but I've studied in England for four years :smile:
Reply 5
Hey I'm Tilly too, sort of! I'm Matilda, but my friends call me Tilda or Tilly, hehe. I've firmed LLB Law at UCL too :smile: Cannot wait for it all to begin!
Hey Tilly (I don't get to share names often haha)! Me too, I'm so so excited, we're going to uni in LONDON!! :biggrin: are you a home student?
Reply 7
Hi guys, I'm a current UCL law student (first year going on second) and would be glad to answer any of your questions!
Original post by stjonks
Hi guys, I'm a current UCL law student (first year going on second) and would be glad to answer any of your questions!


Hi stjonks! Thanks so much for letting us do that - I definitely have some I heard that there are tutorials at UCL - what are those like? What exactly do you do in them, and how many people are in them? I'd appreciate anything you might be able to tell us And just anything you think we should know before we head to uni!
Reply 9
Original post by chowbertilla
Hi stjonks! Thanks so much for letting us do that - I definitely have some I heard that there are tutorials at UCL - what are those like? What exactly do you do in them, and how many people are in them? I'd appreciate anything you might be able to tell us And just anything you think we should know before we head to uni!


To begin, law students take four courses each academic year. The courses are predetermined and compulsory for the first two years and options are opened to you in your third. The four courses for the first year are: public law, property I, contract law and criminal law.

For each course, there is one lecture per week lasting two hours. It is unlikely (read: impossible) that you will have more than one lecture per week per course. This means that you will have four lectures per week. On the other hand, tutorials work in fortnightly cycles, with two tutorials per week. So in odd weeks, you could have tutorials in, say, Public law and Property law tutorials while in even weeks you could have tutorials in Contract law and Criminal law tutorials. Thus, each week you should have a total of 8 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials.

Each tutorial lasts for only an hour and usually consists of 7 others of your peers and a tutor who could be anyone ranging from someone who just completed his masters to a full-fledged professor. The tutorials are designed in line with the topics of the lectures you are having each week. The lectures usually only supply you with the necessary information/knowledge that you require to approach the subject. By contrast, tutorials go into greater depth regarding the material you have been introduced in the lectures and are intended to probe you into doing your own further reading so that you may have a fruitful discussion and deeper understanding of the topic at hand.

The exact way in which your tutorial group approaches the topics is entirely up to your tutor. For each tutorial, you will have a corresponding tutorial handout that you are expected to download that tells you what further readings you are expected to do and also questions about the topic to think about. Different tutors have massively varying styles -- some prefer to stick to the questions on the handout whilst others launch into open, sandbox-style debate. Regardless, your tutor ought to provide the opportunity for you to clear any factual doubts you may have regarding the topic.

Regarding additional advice:

1) Law as a subject is rather different from what the typical student is used to; it is an eclectic mix of rote learning (so that you can memorise case names and their ratio decidendi), normative and value-based arguments and pure logic. This may sound intimidating, but you should be able to adjust to this within the first couple of weeks and realise they all fit perfectly together to form a coherent and (typically) common-sensical discipline.

2) Regarding your social life -- you should find nothing lacking. The UCL law faculty and the freshers' fortnight will leave you wanting for nothing in the department of mingling and asylum-worthy madness.

3) Regarding academics -- you probably have two valuable resources to ensure that you're on the right track to getting the grades you desire. First is your personal tutor, a tutor assigned to you to care for your overall wellbeing and discuss whatever issues that may arise in the course of your time in UCL. My tutor helped a lot in teaching me how to approach a subject I was weak at; after all, they were once students too. Your second resource is your transition mentor. UCL has a transition programme and all first-years will be introduced to their assigned transition mentors at the beginning of the year. The transition mentor is a second-year student who is likely to know what exactly you've been through, having experienced the same just a year ago. Transition mentors are usually selected based on willingness to help and a decent academic record which indicate that they are worthy of giving sound advice. I'll be a transition mentor in the coming year too so maybe I'll see one of you then. Mine helped in giving a personal perspective regarding the torrent of events that flooded me when I was a fresher, and will inevitably flood you too. Which brings me on to my fourth point:

4) Having so many events happening at once can be overwhelming. Thus, priorities. Decide what you want to achieve in your first year. Keep in mind that the grades in your first year do not count towards the final grade of your degree. However, also keep in mind that you don't want to suck too badly in your first year because a) you may have to go for the infamous re-sits and b) in general, getting the hang of exams and the core subjects in your first year will save you a lot of trouble in your second and third.

5) You should receive a reading list if you haven't already. I didn't really read much of what was on it, and I turned out fine. The first two weeks of your academic year should have no real lectures, only an 'introduction to law' series or something which is mind-numbingly dull and almost completely pointless. Just attend the lectures for the series for the heck of it, I didn't gain much from it but maybe you would.

Hope you found the above useful. I'm still open to further questions.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by stjonks
To begin, law students take four courses each academic year. The courses are predetermined and compulsory for the first two years and options are opened to you in your third. The four courses for the first year are: public law, property I, contract law and criminal law.

For each course, there is one lecture per week lasting two hours. It is unlikely (read: impossible) that you will have more than one lecture per week per course. This means that you will have four lectures per week. On the other hand, tutorials work in fortnightly cycles, with two tutorials per week. So in odd weeks, you could have tutorials in, say, Public law and Property law tutorials while in even weeks you could have tutorials in Contract law and Criminal law tutorials. Thus, each week you should have a total of 8 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials.

Each tutorial lasts for only an hour and usually consists of 7 others of your peers and a tutor who could be anyone ranging from someone who just completed his masters to a full-fledged professor. The tutorials are designed in line with the topics of the lectures you are having each week. The lectures usually only supply you with the necessary information/knowledge that you require to approach the subject. By contrast, tutorials go into greater depth regarding the material you have been introduced in the lectures and are intended to probe you into doing your own further reading so that you may have a fruitful discussion and deeper understanding of the topic at hand.

The exact way in which your tutorial group approaches the topics is entirely up to your tutor. For each tutorial, you will have a corresponding tutorial handout that you are expected to download that tells you what further readings you are expected to do and also questions about the topic to think about. Different tutors have massively varying styles -- some prefer to stick to the questions on the handout whilst others launch into open, sandbox-style debate. Regardless, your tutor ought to provide the opportunity for you to clear any factual doubts you may have regarding the topic.

Regarding additional advice:

1) Law as a subject is rather different from what the typical student is used to; it is an eclectic mix of rote learning (so that you can memorise case names and their ratio decidendi), normative and value-based arguments and pure logic. This may sound intimidating, but you should be able to adjust to this within the first couple of weeks and realise they all fit perfectly together to form a coherent and (typically) common-sensical discipline.

2) Regarding your social life -- you should find nothing lacking. The UCL law faculty and the freshers' fortnight will leave you wanting for nothing in the department of mingling and asylum-worthy madness.

3) Regarding academics -- you probably have two valuable resources to ensure that you're on the right track to getting the grades you desire. First is your personal tutor, a tutor assigned to you to care for your overall wellbeing and discuss whatever issues that may arise in the course of your time in UCL. My tutor helped a lot in teaching me how to approach a subject I was weak at; after all, they were once students too. Your second resource is your transition mentor. UCL has a transition programme and all first-years will be introduced to their assigned transition mentors at the beginning of the year. The transition mentor is a second-year student who is likely to know what exactly you've been through, having experienced the same just a year ago. Transition mentors are usually selected based on willingness to help and a decent academic record which indicate that they are worthy of giving sound advice. I'll be a transition mentor in the coming year too so maybe I'll see one of you then. Mine helped in giving a personal perspective regarding the torrent of events that flooded me when I was a fresher, and will inevitably flood you too. Which brings me on to my fourth point:

4) Having so many events happening at once can be overwhelming. Thus, priorities. Decide what you want to achieve in your first year. Keep in mind that the grades in your first year do not count towards the final grade of your degree. However, also keep in mind that you don't want to suck too badly in your first year because a) you may have to go for the infamous re-sits and b) in general, getting the hang of exams and the core subjects in your first year will save you a lot of trouble in your second and third.

5) You should receive a reading list if you haven't already. I didn't really read much of what was on it, and I turned out fine. The first two weeks of your academic year should have no real lectures, only an 'introduction to law' series or something which is mind-numbingly dull and almost completely pointless. Just attend the lectures for the series for the heck of it, I didn't gain much from it but maybe you would.

Hope you found the above useful. I'm still open to further questions.


I was expecting one sentence answers but you provided so much more than that... thank you so much for that really helpful insight :smile: I want to ask something less general if that's alright - since you say that there's only about 10 hours of contact time each week, I'm just curious as to what do you personally do with the rest of the time? :smile:
Reply 11
Original post by chowbertilla
I was expecting one sentence answers but you provided so much more than that... thank you so much for that really helpful insight :smile: I want to ask something less general if that's alright - since you say that there's only about 10 hours of contact time each week, I'm just curious as to what do you personally do with the rest of the time? :smile:


I think saying what I do in my free time would be very pointless and unhelpful to this thread. What I can say though is what law students in general do outside of 'contact time':

1) You will be receiving invitations to participate in a variety of internal faculty competitions that relate to career skills such as negotiations and mooting. If you are fortunate enough to get promoted in each round (I say 'fortunate' but I really mean 'competent') I'm certain you would be spending much of your time on research and preparation, particularly for moots

2) You will soon realise that the law society is very proactive in providing platforms for students to interact with future employers, predominantly law firms but sometimes also academics and non-law industries such as banking and the like. This means many evenings can be spent mingling with these people.

3) Outside of the law society in general, there are various sports and societies for students of UCL to participate in. Again, your level of involvement is up to you.

4) Having a social life. Or a relationship with Netflix and your bed.

5) There is a significant amount of readings the average law student is expected to do. Although most people don't actually do 100% (or even 50%) of the readings in preparation for lectures/tutorials and still survive. But even if you choose to do all the readings, I'm very sure there's still sufficient time left over for the aforementioned activities as well.

By the way, I'm an international student too so you guys can fire away if you wanna ask about related stuff.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by stjonks
I think saying what I do in my free time would be very pointless and unhelpful to this thread. What I can say though is what law students in general do outside of 'contact time':

1) You will be receiving invitations to participate in a variety of internal faculty competitions that relate to career skills such as negotiations and mooting. If you are fortunate enough to get promoted in each round (I say 'fortunate' but I really mean 'competent') I'm certain you would be spending much of your time on research and preparation, particularly for moots

2) You will soon realise that the law society is very proactive in providing platforms for students to interact with future employers, predominantly law firms but sometimes also academics and non-law industries such as banking and the like. This means many evenings can be spent mingling with these people.

3) Outside of the law society in general, there are various sports and societies for students of UCL to participate in. Again, your level of involvement is up to you.

4) Having a social life. Or a relationship with Netflix and your bed.

5) There is a significant amount of readings the average law student is expected to do. Although most people don't actually do 100% (or even 50%) of the readings in preparation for lectures/tutorials and still survive. But even if you choose to do all the readings, I'm very sure there's still sufficient time left over for the aforementioned activities as well.

By the way, I'm an international student too so you guys can fire away if you wanna ask about related stuff.


Thanks so much again that was really helpful :biggrin: I'm a little worried about accommodation since I submitted the form for starting accommodation from the 26th Sept (and term starts on 28th) - will I miss freshers'?! :s-smilie:
Reply 13
Original post by chowbertilla
Thanks so much again that was really helpful :biggrin: I'm a little worried about accommodation since I submitted the form for starting accommodation from the 26th Sept (and term starts on 28th) - will I miss freshers'?! :s-smilie:


Don't quote me on this because I'm not on the law society committee (the self-sacrificing people organising your freshers') and it may be different this year.

But last year during my freshers', the official term start date listed on the UCL website (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/staff/term-dates/2014-2015) was 22nd September 2014, which was also the first day of my freshers' fortnight. So it is likely that if they told you term starts on the 28th, that will also be the first day of freshers'.

You should receive a letter around August that goes into greater detail regarding when term begins and the schedule for your freshers' fortnight. But from how I see it, there shouldn't be any problems.
Hi guys, I'm Mide and I also firmed UCL for Law. Hopefully I see you all in September
Original post by stjonks
Don't quote me on this because I'm not on the law society committee (the self-sacrificing people organising your freshers') and it may be different this year.

But last year during my freshers', the official term start date listed on the UCL website (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/staff/term-dates/2014-2015) was 22nd September 2014, which was also the first day of my freshers' fortnight. So it is likely that if they told you term starts on the 28th, that will also be the first day of freshers'.

You should receive a letter around August that goes into greater detail regarding when term begins and the schedule for your freshers' fortnight. But from how I see it, there shouldn't be any problems.


Phew, thanks so much stjonks! :biggrin: btw if I'm not mistaken you have exams now? Good luck if you are!!
Original post by Posiedon12
Hi guys, I'm Mide and I also firmed UCL for Law. Hopefully I see you all in September


Hey Mide! Are you home or international? And good luck for your exams if you're not post-A Level, I'm sure we'll all see each other in September! Very excited to start :biggrin:
Original post by chowbertilla
Hey Mide! Are you home or international? And good luck for your exams if you're not post-A Level, I'm sure we'll all see each other in September! Very excited to start :biggrin:


I'm a home student and nope I have my exams in a few weeks. I need to get A*AA :frown:

Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Posiedon12
I'm a home student and nope I have my exams in a few weeks. I need to get A*AA :frown:

Posted from TSR Mobile


What are your subjects? I'm sure you're going to do amazingly :biggrin:
Reply 19
Original post by stjonks
To begin, law students take four courses each academic year. The courses are predetermined and compulsory for the first two years and options are opened to you in your third. The four courses for the first year are: public law, property I, contract law and criminal law.

For each course, there is one lecture per week lasting two hours. It is unlikely (read: impossible) that you will have more than one lecture per week per course. This means that you will have four lectures per week. On the other hand, tutorials work in fortnightly cycles, with two tutorials per week. So in odd weeks, you could have tutorials in, say, Public law and Property law tutorials while in even weeks you could have tutorials in Contract law and Criminal law tutorials. Thus, each week you should have a total of 8 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials.

Each tutorial lasts for only an hour and usually consists of 7 others of your peers and a tutor who could be anyone ranging from someone who just completed his masters to a full-fledged professor. The tutorials are designed in line with the topics of the lectures you are having each week. The lectures usually only supply you with the necessary information/knowledge that you require to approach the subject. By contrast, tutorials go into greater depth regarding the material you have been introduced in the lectures and are intended to probe you into doing your own further reading so that you may have a fruitful discussion and deeper understanding of the topic at hand.

The exact way in which your tutorial group approaches the topics is entirely up to your tutor. For each tutorial, you will have a corresponding tutorial handout that you are expected to download that tells you what further readings you are expected to do and also questions about the topic to think about. Different tutors have massively varying styles -- some prefer to stick to the questions on the handout whilst others launch into open, sandbox-style debate. Regardless, your tutor ought to provide the opportunity for you to clear any factual doubts you may have regarding the topic.

Regarding additional advice:

1) Law as a subject is rather different from what the typical student is used to; it is an eclectic mix of rote learning (so that you can memorise case names and their ratio decidendi), normative and value-based arguments and pure logic. This may sound intimidating, but you should be able to adjust to this within the first couple of weeks and realise they all fit perfectly together to form a coherent and (typically) common-sensical discipline.

2) Regarding your social life -- you should find nothing lacking. The UCL law faculty and the freshers' fortnight will leave you wanting for nothing in the department of mingling and asylum-worthy madness.

3) Regarding academics -- you probably have two valuable resources to ensure that you're on the right track to getting the grades you desire. First is your personal tutor, a tutor assigned to you to care for your overall wellbeing and discuss whatever issues that may arise in the course of your time in UCL. My tutor helped a lot in teaching me how to approach a subject I was weak at; after all, they were once students too. Your second resource is your transition mentor. UCL has a transition programme and all first-years will be introduced to their assigned transition mentors at the beginning of the year. The transition mentor is a second-year student who is likely to know what exactly you've been through, having experienced the same just a year ago. Transition mentors are usually selected based on willingness to help and a decent academic record which indicate that they are worthy of giving sound advice. I'll be a transition mentor in the coming year too so maybe I'll see one of you then. Mine helped in giving a personal perspective regarding the torrent of events that flooded me when I was a fresher, and will inevitably flood you too. Which brings me on to my fourth point:

4) Having so many events happening at once can be overwhelming. Thus, priorities. Decide what you want to achieve in your first year. Keep in mind that the grades in your first year do not count towards the final grade of your degree. However, also keep in mind that you don't want to suck too badly in your first year because a) you may have to go for the infamous re-sits and b) in general, getting the hang of exams and the core subjects in your first year will save you a lot of trouble in your second and third.

5) You should receive a reading list if you haven't already. I didn't really read much of what was on it, and I turned out fine. The first two weeks of your academic year should have no real lectures, only an 'introduction to law' series or something which is mind-numbingly dull and almost completely pointless. Just attend the lectures for the series for the heck of it, I didn't gain much from it but maybe you would.

Hope you found the above useful. I'm still open to further questions.


Hey,
Since you've been so open to answering questions I just thought that you might be able to help with mine. I was wondering if lectures and tutorials are usually scheduled in the morning or the afternoon. I will probably have to take a job and so I have to know if I can accept a job that starts at 15h30.
I would be grateful for any information or advice you could give me.
Thanks

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