Planning out your undergraduate course load can seem like a daunting process  — never mind all the additional questions that come with studying abroad. The following are some quick tips that helped me stay on track and avoid extra stress during LSE’s course selection process.

Start the process early. LSE publishes old course guides that are easily accessible for prospective study abroad students. They contain detailed information about each course— from the typical syllabus to course assessment. Make note of which courses interest you. (In all honesty, they’re also just fun to look through in passing!) Registering your study abroad courses with your home institution will inevitably involve a lot of back-and-forth, so it’s best to get the process started sooner rather than later to avoid feeling rushed at the last minute.

LSE has a lot of courses that fall outside the purview of most American universities, especially liberal arts colleges.

Get a solid understanding of your home university’s academic requirements and regulations. While I’m a political science major, my home institution requires that I complete courses in other subjects like economics and history. Finding interesting and engaging social science courses won’t be a problem at the LSE, but some American universities require STEM or humanities courses regardless of your major. Since these courses aren’t typically offered at the LSE, when selecting courses, make sure that you have either 1) completed all of your home institution’s academic requirements or 2) will be able to take any remaining requirements during your senior year to avoid having to take extra courses or graduating late.

Make sure you check with your home university so that there are no academic surprises when you return. Ensure that you fully understand how your academic credits from LSE will properly transfer over and that you’re checking off the boxes for your graduation, degree, and major requirements. There are some crucial discrepancies between the American and UK academic systems that you should keep in mind. For instance, LSE courses are twice as long as the normal American semester, meaning that instead of taking 3-5 classes per semester, you’ll typically take 4 courses a year. You’ll want to make your home university aware of this so that they can allot academic credit appropriately and so that you can get the most out of your year abroad.

LSE has a lot of courses that fall outside the purview of most American universities, especially liberal arts colleges. For example, most American undergraduate programmes don’t have law/legal studies departments, and liberal arts colleges usually don’t have business, accounting, finance, or management programs. A year at LSE is a great opportunity to explore areas of study outside of what you’d typically get at your home institution, but take care to ensure that all of your credits transfer back towards your degree, so that you don’t have a bunch of miscellaneous academic credits that don’t count for anything. For example, see if finance courses can count as economics credits, or if international relations courses be substituted for political science ones. Again, you’ll want to ask these questions to the relevant administrative members at your home institution well before LSE’s date of official course selection.

Pay attention to the structure and expectations of each course. When selecting courses, play to your academic strengths. If you enjoy writing papers and independent research, choose courses that are essay-based rather than ones where your course grade is determined by a final exam or problem set. A lot of liberal arts colleges tend to focus less on exam-based grading in favour of a more holistic approach to assessment, so be aware of what type of assessment best suits your learning style.

Have a back-up plan. As with anything, it pays to have other options in case a course gets cancelled at the last minute or fills up before you can register. LSE has an extensive selection of classes, so there are a myriad of options for your course of study.

When choosing between upper or lower-division courses, err on the side of caution— specifically with courses that have a significant quantitative component. LSE is infamous for the difficulty of its economics and econometrics courses, so if you’re like me and not the most mathematically inclined, I’d definitely recommend reaching out to other LSE students to see what their course experience was like.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to students from your home university who have also pursued a year abroad at LSE. They’ll be able to provide you with much more insightful advice as to how LSE’s courses compare to those at your home university. Most of the LSE study abroad staff will only be able to speak to the general experiences of study abroad students, so the advice of students from your home institution might be more relevant and useful.

When in doubt, just ask. Your study abroad advisor and professors are all there to help you. If you’re confused about an academic requirement or are have a question about a course, it’s much better to risk the initial embarrassment of asking a dumb question instead of letting the problem grow into something with greater consequences.

With careful planning, selecting study abroad courses doesn’t have to be a stressful ordeal. Hopefully, the aforementioned tips can help minimize any problems one might encounter during LSE’s course selection process.