Personal Statement for LSE

yk2007

(NOTE: I am an international student, and if I don't get into either LSE/Imperial/Oxford I will not be going to the UK. I would rather go to University of Toronto or UBC than to spend 40,000 pounds on a UK degree)
I'm going to be applying to LSE, Imperial or Oxford this September and will be applying to the following courses:

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Oxford - Mathematics and Computer Science (Dream school)

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Imperial - Mathematics and Computer Science

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Imperial - Mathematics with Applied Mathematics / Mathematical Physics

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LSE - Mathematics with Economics

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LSE - (Data Science) or (Math with Data Science) or (Math and Econ) or (Financial Math) or (Math, Stat, Business)

The thing is I'm worried about the jumble of subjects that I'm applying to and how my personal statement will play out. If I apply to the courses I mentioned above, I would have to write about Math, Computer Science, and Economics.
I want to tailor my application to Oxford and write about 50% Math and 50% Computer Science. But, I know that Oxford doesn't look at the PS too much but rather you interview scores and MAT. LSE, however, looks more closely at your personal statement so I feel like I should be writing about economics. So now the dilemma is whether I should include 33% Math, 33% Computer Science, 33% Economics which would turn out to be terrible. Of course, that wouldn't let me dive deeply into each subject.

I don't know how to link the 3 subjects together, or if I should even attempt to link the 3 subjects together. I 100% want to include mathematics and computer science into my personal statement for Oxford, but I don't want to spoil my Oxford application for LSE. Plus, I feel like my economics super-curriculars are very weak compared to math/computer science which I had a more genuine interest in. But, I am interested in economics and was planning on minoring in economics if I went to a Canadian university (Math + CS with econ minor).
Any courses you guys recommend that I apply to at LSE?

Reply 1

oceanb1ue

I think if I was you I'd be really careful about applying to LSE with computer science super-curriculars. Personally I was in a similar boat when I went to the LSE open day, as I wanted to study computer science at other unis but data science at LSE, and even with data science, there's hardly any computer science so that you might come across as not very well-suited to the course if you do apply with computer science supercurriculars in your PS.
Plus, if you're up against other candidates applying to Oxford who are solely talking about maths and computer science, the same thing is going to happen - economics may seem irrelevant and suggest you might not be the best applicant for the course. Even if Oxford doesn't value the PS as much as other things, it's not like they don't read it altogether. At the end of the day, all the unis you're applying to are super prestigious and they want to see that you care about THEIR subject, not about others.
Basically even the most computer science heavy course at LSE could be applied to without even talking about computer science and simply focusing on maths and stats. So honestly, I'd say there's little point in applying to LSE at all, especially if you want to maximise your chances of getting Oxford with 50% computer science. I suppose you could do something both economics and computer science related, like predicting stock prices with machine learning algorithms (obviously there's less basic ones than that), but the same problem of not being a fully suitable candidate both for LSE and Oxford still applies.
But good luck with whatever you do!