University of Loldon Diploma

University of London Diploma

University of London is on my list of schools for both my MBA and LLM. I know that the UofL DL diplomas have the word external written on them. From what I have heard from other people on this and other forums it looks pretty bad. Dose anyone on here have a UofL external diploma that they could post or post a link to where I could see one?

Thanks

 

Re: University of London Diploma

Normally "External" might be something of a pejorative in the US - but anywhere else, the words "University of London" trumps that lay misperception. Furthermore, London has the most impecable pedigree: having orginated distance learning when it was founded in 1858.

Every US professor I have told that I am studying through the UofL (even externally) has been more duly impressed than I am. It is brand name with top flight associations - top twenty in the world, according to one recent authoritative assesment
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm).

--Orson

 

20th on the list was the University College London, which I believe is a different entity from the University of London altogther. I have asked the question regarding the reputation of the University of London many times to no avail. Maybe their simply isnt enough people enrolled their that use degreeinfo.com, in order for some of us with questions regarding the school to address. This is the first time that I can recall, that degreeinfo.com seems to be stumped..lol....just playin

 

Re: University of London Diploma

In reality, how many times is someone going to ask to see your diploma? I've only been asked for it once (a photocopy), when I applied for a educational pay incentive at work.

I started a thread awhile back asking where everyone kept their diplomas, and they generally were either in a drawer somewhere (as in my case), or framed and hanging on a wall.

 

I have been asked for my diploma twice..

Once at my current job AFTER I had been hired and once when I applied to an SA university. As an adjunct professor all the school ever asked for were my transcripts.

 

University College London is one of the constitutant Colleges of the University of London. Go to www.lon.ac.uk for a complete listing.

 

I have a degree (MSc, external) awarded by University of London, as does my brother (MA, internal) and father (PhD, external). So I am quite familiar with the organization. But it's difficult to remark on the reputation of the University of London as a whole because some of its members (such as UCL, Imperial, LSE) have a world-class reputation, whereas others have a relatively poor reputation.

 

Thanks for the interesting posts guys, however I'm kind of disappointed with them because non of them really answer my original question.


BTW since we are on the topic of UofL schools. How well respected in Royal Holloway College?

 

Bottom line: How can you go wrong?

There are some 50 constituent units to the University of London, but UCL and Imperial - together - make up the two largest ones.

On the survey, yes, UCL ranked 20th, and Imperial 17th. Meanwhile Kings College was 70 something. Anyone see LSE?

True - Royal Holloway may be more mererly good than excellent. Who'll care this side of the pond?

But after Cambridge and Oxford, London usually comes in third in England for best reputation (although Durham and Warwick get selective votes, too - the former wins for "most picturesque" from me). Let's not go "UK" and open things up for more ancients like Edinburgh and St Andrews!

Bottom line: will anyone seriously say "you'll go wrong with a University of London degree?"

--Orson

 

where can one see this "ranking" of colleges?

thx!

t.

 

Just so bo knows, you can search out the "League Tables" published by the big London broadsheets every fall.

This simplified one is from the Financial Times:
http://www.crescendo.edu.my/link/uk.html

Another authoritative source are the UKs
Research Assessment Excercise - kind of equivalent to US accreditation, only more public, systematic, and, well - British.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/researchratings/0,11227,616612,00.html
(Actually, this ratings proceedure appears to be the UK equivalent of a US ranking exercise - based on research PhD programsand citations - its name I forget...anyone wanna help me here? But it's one done only every 8 or 10 or 12 years in the US, not 5 as the UK now does.)

This effort grades every university department in the country on a 5-point scale - 5 being the highest. Endless details may be searched above!

For example, Royal Holloway College, overall, was ranked 14th in 2001
http://education.guardian.co.uk/researchratings/table/0,11229,-4319756,00.html?start=10

--Orson

 

Re: Re: University of London Diploma

I wouldn't put too much faith in the world ranking at the link above. It's a very poorly designed survey/ranking. Right of the bat, they assign a weight of 20% for Nobel Prize winners. This exaggerates the importance of any school that has a Nobel, and leaves the other schools to fight over the remaining criteria, which doesn't provide enough detail to truly differentiate those schools. The result is a mishmash that doesn't mean too much. If you take a look at the first 100 or so, you'll see some strange results, IMHO.

 

Re: Re: Re: University of London Diploma

I don't know that I would call it "poorly designed:" it measures what it was designed to measure. It measures citations and reaserch productivity. That Nobel Laureates rank highly is only to be expected.

That said, there are indeed "strange results." For example, who else would seriously rank the University of Alaska-Fairbanks ahead of Arizona State University or The University of Georgia? And ahead of UC-Santa Cruz? Strange indeed.

But that's in the second half of the US portion. The upper half rankings
look sounder and more defensible. And the international comparisons also bear greater utility - there aren't many other alternative studies.

--Orson

 

As I noted in an earlier thread, I have one degree from a school ranked 251-300 (at http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/rank-2003.mht), two from a school ranked 2, one from an unranked school (i.e. an unranked college of U. London), and a graduate diploma from another unranked school.

 

But have they served you well? (Isn't this bootom line question all the degree seeker cares about?)

--Orson

 

Back to the original question of this thread- does anyone know what the Univ of London External Programme diplomas actually look like, aside from the fact that they have the "external" text written on them? That is, do they look like typical US diplomas, with nice calligraphy, suitable for framing? Or do they look more like some simple typewritten text listing the degree awarded?

By PhD diploma, by the way, looks like something they ran off an inkjet printer, whereas my BA diploma is very fancy looking. Both degrees are from venerable US schools- one an Ivy and one a midwestern equivalent of an Ivy.

Am already enrolled in a Univ of London external degree program; am just curious what the diploma will look like. Thanks,

Alex

 

Mine looks very cheap. I've received better looking certificates from one-week short courses in the U.S.

Certainly not something I would ever put in a frame. (I have my ebay fake degree in a frame, though. Looks much more authentic!)

If I can find the London degree I will try to scan for you.

 

oxpecker,please endeavor to dig out your london external parchment and scan it for clarification sake.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: University of London Diploma

I guess my problem with the ranking is that I'm not sure a Nobel winner from, say, 1966 has much effect on current research. Nobels tend to be awarded on long past accomplishments, so even a current Nobel winner may be receiving it for work done 10, 20, or 30 years in the past. If you look at the top 50 of this ranking, there's only a handful that have a zero Nobel ranking. Conversely, the vast majority of schools from 100 onward have zero Nobel scores. Because UC Boulder, for example, has scored a couple of Nobels, it outranks other schools with much stronger research roots, like University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne and UT-Austin. Likewise, Univ. of Southern California is highly ranked because it has one Nobel in Chemistry (George Olah, who did his work in the 1960's.). Consequently USC outranks other schools that have much stronger research programs.

Nobels are important, but I think in this case, it skews the results, and this makes for a ranking that should be taking with a large grain of salt.

 

The propblem with your theory is...

That the schools themselves tend to fight over professors with awards such as the Nobel so they, apparently, see some value in them. It is a hotly debated topic at American Universities that many schools pay a ton of money for a star professor who may teach few or no courses and then pay the workhorse professors far, far less. UC-Boulder scored better than Illinois for some other reason because there are few schools in the USA that have more Nobels than UI-UC. I have seen elswhere a listing on this and Illinois was way up there in the total number of Nobel winners. Would you say that the ranking methodology used by the US News & World Report with its easily manipulated admissions and acceptance figures is more valid? However, I personally would accept one which focuses on academics rather than student perceptions as the most valid method. Heck, SUNY-Buffalo had an applications boost this year because they had a Real World segment filmed on campus. That really makes for an improvement in their academic effectiveness. The real truth is that all rankings should be taken with a grain of salt.