Sorry I'm a bit late to the debate. Comparing an "old" university with a former polytechnic is a like trying to compare an apple with an orange. Okay they are both fruit, but after that it gets a somewhat pointless comparison. The analogy I use is that of a football one. If overnight one merged all the English football divisions and all the teams played each other - who do you think at the end of the season would be in the top 20 teams? It was the same when the government removed the binary divide between unis and polys in 1992. Overnight Thames Valley or any other former poly was playing in the same "league" as Oxford, Cambridge and so on. As someone who has worked in both types of institution there are good points about both. But, if we are being realistic, in the outside world after graduation the OP's CV would look "better" to an employer if it said Leicester rather than DMU. I'm not saying that is "right" but it is the unfortunate reality.