Is LSE not worth it?

An excellent point - people tend to forget the day-to-day annoyances of the capital (not least the sheer amount of time taken moving around and the cost of everything).


Glad to hear that you're liking it here - I remembered your thread that was very apprehensive from a while back

LSE is what you make of it. I'm a first year student there and I can tell you that if you are seriously committed to academia, you will thrive here. It's a community of some of the most rigorous minds in the world (for social sciences and humanities) and you'll be lucky to be taught by professors and teachers who are world leaders in their subjects (You might even end up being taught by the same person who wrote your textbook!)

Yes the workload is pretty tough, but what do you expect? This is a top flight world Uni.

I never get all these negative comments about the LSE, complaining about the workload is like buying a Lamborghini and complaining that it's too fast

From what I gather, LSE is isolating, badly taught, overrun with international students, boring, and depressing.

But you should still go, 'because it's LSE'.

I think that you'd have a bit more credibility if you had actually studied here in the first place. "What I gather..." is nothing more than saying "from the five threads I've seen about LSE on this forum..."

If you'd actually read any of the posts in detail, you'd see that half of them were influenced by people refusing to admit that they themselves were at fault (like blaming everyone for being anti-social when they themselves didn't bother joining any societies lol), or transposing their own pre-existing issues onto the uni (like that guy who really didn't want to go to uni but was forced to by his parents and now, surprise surprise, hates it, feels homesick, and wants to drop out).

I'd also question how you can say that proportionately more people complain about LSE when a) the sample size on TSR is so small, b) there's obviously a selection bias in favour of those who have to say something negative, c) the posts that are negative are spread over several years (all the way back to 2010), and d) the overwhelming majority of people here have never heard of TSR, don't care about what's on it and certainly have no incentive to start posting in defence of their uni (I'm an exception because I had an account for a year and a half before starting).

Then, of course, you seem to have no issue stating these "issues" as fact, using bold, un-nuanced language like "boring" and "many international students", without substantiating any of your claims with anything other than with the classic "I saw it on TSR" justification. You're part of a TSR bandwagon and you don't even realise it.

LSE is what you make of it. I'm a first year student there and I can tell you that if you are seriously committed to academia, you will thrive here. It's a community of some of the most rigorous minds in the world (for social sciences and humanities) and you'll be lucky to be taught by professors and teachers who are world leaders in their subjects (You might even end up being taught by the same person who wrote your textbook!)

Yes the workload is pretty tough, but what do you expect? This is a top flight world Uni.

I never get all these negative comments about the LSE, complaining about the workload is like buying a Lamborghini and complaining that it's too fast

That's a nice but naive way of going about things. Actually, not all of a) to d) apply to all universities. The reason why you think that LSE has proportionately larger number of complaints is because these tend to be the most hotly debated posts that are usually posted on by people like you, with the classic "omg I heard people complain about it this must be true". Other unis, with larger uni populations, and more active TSR users, have enough other threads to hide/mask the ones with negative comments. LSE's subforum, on the other hand, is dominated by two types of post: the "can I get in?", and "don't come here" sorts. It's a pretty dead forum all things considered, and that only gives more precedence to the negative reviews.

The whole "smoke without fire" argument is idiotic, considering that you don't even know what issues there are in the first place. Most people here, believe it or not, don't go around every day thinking "urgh so many Asians why am I here". The real issues that will affect most students are minor, everyday ones, such as the inconsistency of the lecture recordings or the fact that so little of the material covered will be discussed in classes. Of course, none of these are mentioned on here, partly because of people like you who lazily make sweeping judgments about a place they have never experienced.

Indeed, I would argue that the "smoke without fire idea" is downright dangerous, considering the fact that, as said above, many people blame the university for their own personal failings, instead of addressing them. To continue with the analogy, some people need to simply realise that they're looking at the wrong fire.

Thanks for completely failing to acknowledge any of the points I made. I expected as much.

Last time I checked, student satisfaction did not measure the student experience. Most of the posts complaining about LSE have to do with it being "boring" etc, and rarely go into depth about any aspect of the teaching or feedback (which they should). These are not reflected anywhere in the NSS survey, and as such have no relation to it.

Try again.

There is an annual independent national survey (called the National Student Survey or NSS for short) which takes place each year and asks final year undergraduate students to say how satisfied they were in a range of academic areas, from teaching to personal development opportunities.

Look, you're going to spend the next 3 years studying so it is 100% important to go to an institution that is prestige and high for your course. If this isn't your priority, which it should be then just simply go to a university with more of a social life.

You need to choose between the 2nd best university after Oxbridge in the UK or a university which is ranked 50 so you can have a great time and get drunk every friday/saturday and the odd Thursday.

That's not true. It's not 'choose between LSE and Oxford Brookes'. It's more like 'choose between LSE and Durham', or some other highly ranked university that has great student satisfaction. You can have both prestige and a good time, you know.

Did you not read what I just said? In the end OP will have to choose between having a good time or going to a prestigious institution, I don't care if they are both highly ranked, one is always going to be significantly better.

LOOOOOOOOOOOL you lost me at "is LSE significantly more prestigious than Durham"

Hahahahahhaha, WAKE UP BOY