The first thing you’ll notice when you start at LSE is that other students seem to be only interested in money. If you are too, great, then you’ll be looking for a well-paid internship for the summer after your first year and will find lots of like-minded people. If you are not, well, you may feel lonely and ‘different’ at first, until you join that Language Center Arabic class, or any society which is not business focused. And actually, when you do talk to Finance students or to members of the Accounting Society, you may even find that they also have interesting things to talk about! By going beyond the surface and getting to know the personalities of the students around you, you will find that everyone at LSE has had a very unconventional life.

This is probably what characterizes LSE students compared to students of other universities: apart from outstanding academic achievements, they have all had particularly exciting lives. Most people here speak several languages and I even had a friend who spoke Lingala (a dialect spoken in Congo)! Most of your fellow students will be well-travelled and will have done interesting things in exotic countries. I’ve met people who worked in a make-up company in Peru, taught English in Mongolia, translated a travel magazine in Namibia… And this is also what LSE student do during the summer vacation. Some I’ve already mentioned will be working for a bank and earn enough to pay the next year’s tuition fees. Others will be travelling the world or helping other communities. And then there are those who set up their own consultancy firm and run their business.

If you are a homebody who is not very interested in the outside world, then it may be that you find very few people like you at LSE. Indeed, most people here have already taken steps towards their ultimate goal: making a difference on the world.