QMUL vs Nottingham vs Leeds - Law

I've got into these universities for law (LLB).
Being an international student (from India) which one would suit me the best.
Want to compare them on their prestige and future career prospects.

Thanks

I would rank them in that order, maybe the first 2 are on a par and Leeds slightly behind. They are all good unis. the bigger thing is whether you want to be in London.

As for employment then maybe QM is better known as its in London. That means extra expense.

You’d be fine with any of the three of you are aiming for a city training contract.

All three universities are targeted by law firms

Rankings actually mean very little for trAining contracts

Going into clearing will mean even less.

Doesn't clearing mean the college couldn't even fill the seats? Why would firms come in to give jobs there?

Clearing is a more complex issue. Unis have X number of places and they make predictions of how many of these places will be filled from multiple sources. The prediction is a) how many firms will meet their offer b) how many insurance will miss their firm offer. Entering into Clearing does not matter in itself, as it just means that the predictions went awry.

It might matter to you where they take in sub-par students to fill these spots. QMUL is more prone to this than Nottingham, but neither is immune. Being around AAB students is not going to affect your TC applications, though! Firms are not following which uni has the more A*AA students. It will only affect your student experience, i.e. mixing with mediocre students.

It means that there are places available. But all it takes is for a higher proportion of people to not get the grades they expected and not meet their conditional offers, or turn down offers and the university will have available places.

Say a university has 10% of its places available in clearing. That still means 90% of the cohort got in normally and met their grade requirements. It could also be quite feasible that the 10% through clearing actually got in with a higher average tariff entry than the 90% too.

So firms would care less if the university went into clearing or not. In most cases they wouldn’t even check to see if they had or not.

Thank you both for 'clearing' out that concept for me. This is a wonderful platform for confused students like me to get answers.

Finally, in your opinion. Leeds or Nottingham? As putting QMUL into the picture would get city vs campus into the debate.
Thanks!

QMUL by a yard.

For what reason?

One of the best in the UK for law, although having rechecked it I note that Leeds is above it now. with that being said QMUL seems to offer better opportunities by virtue of its location being next to the law courts. Also having known several people who have done LLBs at QMUL they have all praised its course

My insight from working with all three unis:

Leeds: very good law society, attracts a fair amount of sponsorship, good focus on employability matters by the law faculty. Careers service is pretty good too. Although it has year abroad opportunities, I never saw as many applicants from these courses compared to Nottingham. Will probably have a higher proportion of people looking to stay in the North West/North to work, so there will be fewer people aiming for London TCs (if that’s what you are aiming for). Don’t know the stats, but would expect Leeds to have the highest proportion of British or EU students on the LLB courses compared to Nottingham and QM. Nice law building - all relatively new and modern.

Nottingham: good law society and careers service. Runs probably the largest law careers fair outside of Manchester. Seems to have a very strong year abroad opportunity - would regularly see students doing year abroad opportunities in Australia and Asia, as well as Europe. Probably benefits from Nottingham strong marketing presence in Asia and its campuses in Malaysia and China. Nottingham will probably be the cheapest place to live out of the three, parts of Nottingham are as rough as parts of Leeds or East London. I used to probably get the most applicants from Nottingham than the other two unis, so suspect there is more appetite from their cohorts to work in London due to its demographic.

QM: the law faculty is one of their strongest faculties, and this is really given the strength of its postgrad courses and research. Mile End is definitely one of the least attractive places in London, but you are close to the city and the swanky places in East London where a coffee will cost you a fiver. Their careers service is good, their law society less so. Benefits from being so close to city law firms that it’s easy to go along to evening careers events in the Autumn. You also tend to get a lot of good guest lecturers that can pop to the uni rather than having to travel several hundred miles to speak. There always seems to be a very large international cohort and there will be a much stronger presence of people from local families, typically those from lower social economic groups and first generation university goers. This can sometimes make the cohort a little more naive about how to get into a city firm compared to somewhere like Nottingham, and to some extent Leeds, where there will be a higher proportion of students attending who are kids of lawyers or other high flying professionals.

Used to work at various firms, still work with some.

Firms receive applications from candidates. The number of those applications from different universities varies a lot depending on the firm and the university.

For instance, for years I struggled to get applications from Leeds students when I worked in a MC firm. Their application numbers were shockingly low, mainly because there was this false perception that MC firms were not interested in Leeds students. That had improved in recent years though.

There’s no bias for Oxbridge.

No - good academics alone will not secure you a TC. But that would be the case if you went to QM, Nottingham, Leeds, Durham, UCL or Oxbridge.

What is the best law course is subjective. I have never studied law, and no one will have done so at all three universities so it is impossible for anyone to say what is the best one out of the three.

Look at the different opportunities you could have with each university. The first and second year modules will be similar, but you will see some differences in the third year. If you want to do a year abroad, then look at the options they have there. Look at whether you can do things like take optional modules from outside of the faculty. For Instance, if you want to learn a language you can sometimes do a module that allows you to do that. I know some universities are offering optional modules on things like coding. But these all vary from course to course and university to university.

Look at how the course is structured. How much does your first or second year count towards your final grade. Look at the details of how key modules are assessed - is it more exam based or essay/problem based? Are you someone who is better at exams or essays, if so think about which would work better for you.

I don’t know enough about their respective grading systems to comment on that. Nottingham has had a reputation of having or or two tricky first year modules that result in lower grades, and even the faculty sending letters out to recruiters to mention they should consider that.

But it clearly can’t be that difficult to get a 2.1 or above at Nottingham - plenty of people manage it and go on to be successful at securing a training contract.

I’d say you were wrong about the prestige. They are all equal in my eyes.

You get work experience, your university doesn’t support you directly with that unless you do a placement year (which none of these universities do).