Anyone rejected from LSE/UCL (or both) got into Oxbridge?

League tables are not a good way to make your decision. There are many reasons not to do law at Oxford, mainly because it's a traditional, 'black letter' course, and there are more progressive, modern courses offered elsewhere. For example most universities don't have compulsory Roman law (that I'm aware of?). However quality is not one of those reasons.

Moreover, law as a profession is notoriously snooty and prestige-orientated. Getting a pupilage at a barristers chambers is very difficult if your degree isn't Oxbridge, or perhaps LSE. Oxford students find getting into law careers much, much easier. I've known quite a few people with firsts from pretty good universities struggle to get placements where they want, and only know one who got a pupilage, yet all my Oxford friends, even those who did History and wanted to do conversion courses, found it much easier.

Now look at league tables. What are their basis for comparison? Teaching quality I can understand, though the TQA have said many times that the 6 scores out of 4 should not be added up, as they're designed to be tested against specific criteria and dropping a point on one may be more than made up by being vastly above a 4 on another, yet that isn't represented in an overall score. Research quality is a bit iffy to be used, since it really has little bearing. New entrants' grades is quite useful, though only for peer group/prestige reasons, rather than the course. Lastly comes the strange "graduate destinations", which gives amazingly stupid results since rather menial jobs count, whereas various further study things don't. To differentiate, employment-wise, between top universities you need to look at where the grads get into, not just whether they get a job.

Oxford law isn't for everyone, but that'e because of style, not quality. Some league table having it 5th has no bearing on anything, really. League tables aren't designed to test between the top few, they're designed to test between the majority, the 50 or 60 universities near the middle, and even that they're not brilliant at.

I got 10A*s and 2As at GCSE and 4 As at AS level including maths and 285/300 in economics and got rejected for economics L100 at UCL at the beginning of the application cycle. Whats going on? I don't understand the London unis at all...

I got 10A*s and 2As at GCSE and 4 As at AS level including maths and 285/300 in economics and got rejected for economics L100 at UCL at the beginning of the application cycle. Whats going on? I don't understand the London unis at all...

The logic behind this is that these universities know you've applied for oxbridge. They also know that Oxbridge will offer you AAA and so will a university of UCL's calibre will do the same. So in the event you do get an offer of AAA from Oxbridge, UCL will assume this so, and reject you since they will give you an offer of AAA as well. Recieving both offers at AAA is a waste of one of them, and mostly likely a waste of UCL's if indeed you do manage to secure and Oxbridge offer.

I got 10A*s and 2As at GCSE and 4 As at AS level including maths and 285/300 in economics and got rejected for economics L100 at UCL at the beginning of the application cycle. Whats going on? I don't understand the London unis at all...

I was rejected by both UCL and LSE and am now very happily studying at Merton College Oxford.

With respect, 285/300 isn't particularly spectacular at AS Economics and being such a competitive course, a lot of applicants are going to have strings of A*'s. In this case, there must have been some weakness in your PS or reference that UCL picked up - bear in mind they will have different criteria to other Uni's so this doesn't mean your PS was necssarily bad overall.

nonsense. UCL is hardly that amazing in economics.it gets gd ratings on league tables, but student quality wise isnt that great. UCL is very strange when picking candidates. one girl from my school got into UCL for medicine with a B in A level Chemistry.

If ever someone needed advice on the conclusion to be drawn about league tables, then look no further.

Great post!