pomegranate

LBS's MBA is now ranked 1st in the world by financial times. It's not a great place to do a PhD thogh. They're not keen on taking PhD students in fact.

It's also got a lot to do with the structure of the UK PhDs. It's research pure. On many programmes you won't be required to do any teaching. Some people pick up a few hours here and there just to get some experience but it's not a rule. So you can have a british PhD with very little to none teaching experience and then compete for jobs with US PhD holders who taught for 2-4 years already. It makes quite a big difference.

King's is really really strong in IR though and has a ridiculously competitive War Studies programme. Have a look at The student room postgraduate forum and you might get more responses as that's where many UK applicants/students post.

Well, with the UK Msc you won't be able to do much but apply for a PhD if you want to go into teaching in academia. And fully funded PhD places are not that easy to obtein, which I am sure you know. So if you know that you want to carry on as an academic, I would really take the US offer straight away.

It's harder to secure funding full stop. not just when you're an international student and not just for MA programmes. Only some PhD places are funded and those are extremely competitive. One of the programmes I currently applied to for example offers just 8 fully funded PhDs to all Arts and Humanities admits, so probably about 500 people, if not more. If you're self funding, UK is definitely cheaper, if you're hoping for funding to finance your studies, it's extremely difficult.

Hi, although I can't compare US and UK masters as i only have experience of the UK education, there are loads of US students here and they all say that they opted for UK because it was quicker and cheaper to get an MA here and that it was recognised back in US. The only thing that they all strassed was the importance of going to a school that is widely recognised in US. I guess in your case UCL would be the best bet. Durham for example has an amazing reputation in the UK but I don't think it's aprticularly well known abroad. UCL is a global brand though.

btw. one more tip. You might want to check out The Student Room postgraduate forum as many postgrad students and applicants in the UK post there. You might be able to get more insight into British schools and your specific course there.

Bristol has an excellent reputation in the UK and tends to be ranked in top 10. Royal Holloway and UEA are more of top 20 -30 unis (depending on league tables) when it comes to general reputation. I guess internationally though RHUL might be most recognisable because of the University of London brand attached to it. But as it's already been mentioned here RAE is what you should really look into for postgrad as league tables in UK are based on undergrad degrees only. Also, you said you're going for an industry based degree. I'd say the main thing to consider then are the links to the industry that your 3 unis/courses have. Are there any internship options on offer? do they help with placements? where are most companies within the industry based and how easily accessible are they going to be for you once at RHUL, UEA or Bristol? RHUL has the benefit of being a part of UoL, which gives you access to more resource and libraries and intercollegiate events, etc. Though having said that Egham is really far, it's not really London and it would take you over 1 hour to get to central London. not only time consuming but expensive! something to bear in mind. On the other hand if you are after a campus based uni where everyone's life is very much centred around uni, then you would probably like RHUL. Egham hasn't got much to offer and is too far to just pop over to central london for a coffee or a pint so automatically campus life is much more vibrant then at any of the central london colleges, where it's really easy to just go off and do your own thing.