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Bristol or Nottingham for Law?

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You're putting words into my mouth. The tariff is the same, but Oxford attracts higher calibre students than Bristol and Nottingham by some margin. The tariff is irrelevant. To support this claim,Oxford average tariff for Law is 603, compare that to Bristol at 495. Despite having a requirement of AAA, Oxford Law students attain the highest A-Levels on average.

One of the local "hothouse" schools has a ridiculous tariff average produced by 4 "proper" A2s, General Studies to A2, Critical Thinking AS and EPQ. Whether being entered for every exam under the sun corresponds with being a "higher calibre student" is in my view another matter entirely. I was accepted to Bristol and I only declared a tariff of 360 (AAA). If anything I'd argue (anecdotally) the sort of student that emerges from one of these "exam factory" schools struggles with the independent study required at university. They don't hold your hand at Bristol!

Similarly research ratings should be ignored completely. At Bristol I found there was an inverse relationship between research strength and teaching quality. Those too focused on their publications didn't care much for a second year undergraduate class on land law.

Application numbers to Bristol have been declining in recent years but I'm not sure how much of that is down to an increase in places offering law and/or a decrease in the number of UCAS options and/or 9k fees. A decline in numbers isn't necessarily a decline in the quality of applicants anyway.

For what it is worth despite being a Bristol grad I'm happy to make a number of criticisms of the department. A prioritization of research over teaching, a growing staff to student ratio, limited feedback and a lack of interest in people wishing to pursue non-legal careers were particular gripes of mine when I was there.

I've always found it odd that while TSR obsesses about data and metrics things like feedback scores from the NSS are not discussed more given that is of far more importance to the average undergraduate than the (subjective?) judgments about a professor's research quality.

That is my 2 cents anyway.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 21

decanto

thanks everyone I have firmed Nottingham Trent

Reply 22

Norton1

Original post by decanto

thanks everyone I have firmed Nottingham Trent

I think people assumed it was between Nottingham University and Bristol, rather than NTU and Bristol. You may well have got quite different answers to that question.