LSE welcomes everyone from all walks of life. The School strives to minimise barriers preventing prospective students from attaining the quality postgraduate education they deserve, regardless of their background and conditions. This begins in the application process, where you can request for a waiver from the £95 administrative fee providing you meet the criteria.

Who can apply for a waiver?

LSE encourages postgraduate applicants facing persistent financial hardship to submit a waiver request. This applies for residents in countries under pervasive conflicts and/or with difficult access to banking services; refugees; asylum-seekers; individuals with humanitarian protection and discretionary leave to remain and stateless persons. Students under these criteria who are reinstating their applications can also apply.

The waive isn’t applicable for students facing temporary cash flow issues who have sufficient savings and income. However, worry not, for there are various funding support schemes you can explore while applying for LSE.

How to apply for a waiver?

You’ll need to fill in a waiver request form available here. You should submit the form once you’ve either requested to reinstate your application or started your online postgraduate application. This allows LSE to record your application and amend it to approve of your waiver request.

Some of you might also need to provide documentary evidence in support of your waiver. Write down as much information as possible on your conditions to be strongly considered for a waiver. Make sure that you submit the form only after you’ve uploaded all the required documents to your application.

All information you provide in the waiver application will only be used to consider your eligibility for the waiver, and not for your application and scholarships, and will only be retained by the waiver decision maker.

When to apply for a waiver?

Applications for 2024/5 entry are now open! Admission competitions are tight and the earlier you apply, the bigger your chances are of being accepted in your programme of choice and of meeting financial support/scholarship and visa deadlines.

Take notes of the early deadlines of some scholarships and individual programme details. It’s best that you submit your administrative fee waiver request 10 working days before any of these deadlines, at the very latest.

You can read more about the administrative fee waiver here. All the best for your applications and we hope to see you be #PartofLSE next year!