The London School of Economics and Political Science needs no introduction as one of the world’s leading universities. There are at least a thousand reasons why you should spend your semester abroad here and I will share with you my top five.
1.Location and events
London is the world’s most powerful city, according to Global Power City Index, and studying at LSE provides you a unique opportunity to attend an incredible number of high-quality events and interact with some of the most successful people in the world.
During my CEMS exchange, I encountered people such as:
- Raghuram Rajan (23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and one of the 100 Most influential people in the world)
- Robert Shiller (Yale Economist and Nobel Prize winner)
- Tae Hae Nahm (VC investor who has built two unicorn companies)
- Rogerio Xavier (founder of legendary Brazilian hedge fund SPX Capital)
- Chris Sacca (Forbes top 2 Tech investor and billionaire)
There are over 200 student societies ranging from Visual Arts to Entrepreneurs that organise interesting events every day.
Sometimes it is even difficult to decide which event to attend when there are multiple events taking place at the same time. My advice is to join societies that you find interesting as often, you can learn as much or even more outside of the classroom.
2. International experience
LSE offers a truly international experience as it welcomes students from more than 150 countries.
This enables you to broaden your horizons and become a well-rounded individual. It is not uncommon to work on a group project with someone from Chile in the morning, discuss Asian economic affairs over lunch with a colleague from Kazakhstan and in the evening talk about sovereign wealth funds with a fellow from Malaysia at an event organised by an LSE student society.
3. Career service
I was very sceptical of all university career services by nature and had low expectations when I came to LSE. However, I was positively surprised when I discovered LSE Careers.
Firstly, many top tier firms with hundreds if not thousands of applicants or companies that do not traditionally recruit directly from universities come on campus to talk with students and help them in the recruitment process.
On one occasion, I had the chance to talk for half an hour with a representative from the hedge fund that has delivered the fifth-highest return and where Jeff Bezos worked before founding Amazon.
Secondly, there are workshops that allow you to understand better what it really is to work in a specific company or sector.
These types of events helped me realise that I would not want to work at certain companies that I previously admired due to lack of personal fit, even though the compensation employees receive put them in the top 1% of the developed world population.
Thirdly, LSE is the best place if you want to find a job and stay in London as you can network with Alumni or reach out to compatriots to support you in the job/internship seeking process.
4. Interdisciplinary teaching and quality of courses
I really enjoyed the fact that as an exchange student you can choose subjects outside of the Management department. Many of the world’s greatest minds such as Leonardo Da Vinci had interdisciplinary training and interests but nowadays few universities in Europe other than LSE encourage such approach to learning.
Here, exchange students can easily take courses from the International Relations, Finance, Management and Economic History departments at the same time. Furthermore, there are several high-quality courses that cannot be found at business schools.
I doubt that many other universities teach students how to design an application in one-week using hands on approach together with a S&P500 company and a top tier consulting firm, calculate the competitive advantage of an online dating platform or how Maghribi traders overcame trust issues in Medieval Trade.
LSE offers a truly international experience as it welcomes students from more than 150 countries. This enables you to broaden your horizons and become a well-rounded individual.
5. Auditing courses
LSE allows students to freely audit most of the available courses without being officially registered. In the first weeks, you can attend multiple courses and keep the ones you find most interesting.
As a management scholar, do you think that you will have another opportunity in your life to learn about Kant’s Political Philosophy or The State and Political Institutions in Latin America at a top academic institution?
Studying at LSE is a very interesting, challenging and rewarding experience.
If you still have not decided where to go for your CEMS exchange semester, I highly recommend choosing LSE.
Trust me, you won’t regret it!
Comment below if you have any questions.
