Frequently Asked Questions

LSE’s campus and halls of residence will be open to welcome all of our new students for Welcome (Monday 21 September) with a range of enhanced safety measures in place to protect and support you. We expect students to register at LSE for the start of term as our campus will be open. However, if your enrolment is delayed by travel restrictions or problems obtaining your visa, support will be available for you from your programme teams and from central support services until you are able to join us later in Michaelmas Term. 

To ensure an excellent educational experience, we are taking a flexible approach to your teaching and learning throughout the Michaelmas Term. Here are some key elements that will shape your term: 

New students will be able to register for the academic year online, which will be followed with an on-campus enrolment event when you arrive in London. 

Small in-person classes, seminars, tutorial groups, as well as Harvard style teaching sessions, will run on campus where possible, all in socially distanced environments. These activities, as well as other student support, will also be accessible to students unable to access campus if there is a delay to you joining us in London. 

Lectures will be delivered online for Michaelmas Term 2020. All lectures will be recorded and made available for you to access off-campus. 

All programmes will continue to maximise students’ ability to work together, both online and on campus, and contribute safely to your learning community. A mix of interactive activities between classes will give you the opportunity to connect with our world-leading faculty, share ideas with fellow students and engage with LSE’s rich education and research culture.  

We know your experience at LSE is shaped outside of the classroom too, and we will offer you a range of exciting opportunities to develop skills and try new things. These include giving back through volunteering, developing your entrepreneurial ideas via LSE Generate, shaping your community through LSE Students’ Union activities and societies and our new online public lecture programme. All activity will start from Welcome 2020, which will be delivered digitally and in-person. You can also access thriving regional alumni groups too, which operate across the globe.

Across campus and halls of residences, we will introduce enhanced health and safety measures. Where appropriate it is likely that we will go beyond government guidance, based on scientific advice and the expertise of our academic faculty. Face coverings whilst indoors on campus in shared areas and in communal spaces in residences will be mandatory. A robust set of protocols will also be put in place that take a holistic view of how to keep our community safe and well. This includes enhanced cleaning and hygiene practices, recalibrating space, floor markings to ensure social distancing, controlled access to campus buildings and mechanisms to identify and assist individuals and our community more widely if people are unwell. We will also explore what contributions ‘test, trace and isolate’ processes and temperature checks at key points on campus can make to safety, amongst other measures such as hand sanitising stations, disinfectant wipes for classroom settings, one way circulation routes and reduced capacities in teaching and social learning spaces.

We are committed to working in partnership with you to enhance your experiences and Disability and Wellbeing Services, Careers, Student Advice and LSE LIFE will continue to be available to guide you through the next academic year and beyond through excellent online and in-person services where possible.  

We do recognise that it may be difficult for some students to travel internationally to London for the start of term and support will be put in place so that you can access online provision in Michaelmas Term if this is the case.  

LSE's Director, Minouche Shafik said:  

“I very much look forward to welcoming our new students to London for the 2020/2021 academic session in September. The wellbeing of our School community is paramount and our flexible approach to teaching and learning will ensure an excellent education and student experience continues safely for all. We are a global community at LSE, and we are committed to sustaining that openness as we shape the world in partnership with students, staff and friends of our School in the academic year ahead."

Our International Student Visa Advice Team (ISVAT) have a dedicated FAQ page for Coronavirus (COVID-19) immigration advice for current and prospective students.

If your question is not answered in their FAQs, use their query form to contact the team for advice.

If you're looking to book LSE student accommodation, please visit this page on how to book, cancellations and changes, and how COVID-19 measures may affect your accommodation.

If you live in halls or have recently moved out, this page explains the support that's available, what fees you have to pay, what to do if you've moved out, how to collect your belongings and other things that may affect your stay in halls during the coronavirus pandemic.

Current UK government advice is that anyone travelling to the UK from overseas (except from Ireland) is required to self-isolate (quarantine) for 14 days once they arrive. We anticipate that air bridges or travel corridors may be established in the coming weeks which may mitigate some quarantine measures. 

We are monitoring government policy on travel to the UK and will update these pages as appropriate. If the quarantine controls are still in place at the time of your arrival in London, students who have booked a place in one of the LSE halls of residence will be able to quarantine there.

Residences staff will provide you with support and guidance on how to do this safely in your hall. We are also looking at measures to support those who need to quarantine but have not booked a place in one of the LSE halls of residence. 

New students will be able to register online for their LSE programme from August 2020. We will send you information about this shortly.

For students needing to re-register, you can find all the information here.

Welcome 2020 events will be running from 21 September, both online and on campus, and we hope that students will travel to London to take part in these activities.

For the majority of students, term begins on 28 September. We ask students to make every effort to come to campus for the start of term. This is because we are planning to run teaching and learning sessions, eg. seminars, tutorials and classes, on campus in a socially distanced environment. 

However, if your travel plans are impacted by COVID-19 we will put support in place for you to access your teaching and learning remotely in Michaelmas term. 

We will be providing much of our Welcome activity, videos and presentations online this year so you will be able to access them wherever you are and whenever you arrive on campus.

We will also be running some on-campus activity throughout the term to ensure that all our students are welcomed to LSE, regardless of when they arrive.

We will run classes, seminars and tutorial groups, as well as Harvard style teaching sessions, face-to-face on campus in a socially distanced environment, wherever possible. These classes will also be accessible by students unable to access campus in the early weeks of the term. 

Where departments are running synchronous classes/seminars, they will run at least twice so that students in different time zones can engage with them at the start of term.

As term progresses, we expect all students to take part in face-to-face classes, seminars and tutorial groups on the LSE campus. 

All lectures will be delivered online for the Michaelmas Term.

All lectures will be recorded and made available for you to access wherever you are.

All students will have the opportunity to work together between classes in Peer Study Groups on tasks or activities (academic and social).

Timetabled hours of study should stay broadly the same as they would in a ‘non-socially distanced’ LSE environment. 

Experts in our Eden Centre for Education Enhancement have guided the development of our flexible approach to teaching and learning to ensure that you benefit from LSE’s high standards in education in a safe environment.

Our flexible teaching approach will be subject to our stringent quality assurance processes, ensuring that there is no compromise on the rigour or standard of LSE degrees.

We will continue to apply our validation, monitoring and review mechanisms to assure the quality of our courses and programmes.

Our flexible approach to teaching and learning will be in place for the duration of Michaelmas Term.

We will deliver seminars, classes and interactive teaching sessions face-to-face on a socially distanced campus, and online for students whose arrival is delayed, with all lectures delivered online.

We will monitor and review these arrangements regularly throughout the term and follow government guidance to keep our LSE community safe. We will keep you updated as our plans for the Lent and Summer terms develop.

LSE Library will be open from July 2020 for research students.

Undergraduate and master’s students will be able to access the Library, in person, from September 2020, observing social distancing rules.

All students and staff are able to access the Library’s digital materials remotely at any time.

The Students’ Union is working with students and its clubs and societies to provide a programme of events and activities for the 2020-21 academic session.

More information will be available on their website over the summer. 

Across campus and halls of residences, we will introduce enhanced health and safety measures. Where appropriate it is likely that we will go beyond government guidance, based on scientific advice and the expertise of our academic faculty. 

Face coverings whilst indoors on campus in shared areas and in communal spaces in residences will be mandatory. A robust set of protocols will also be put in place that take a holistic view of how to keep our community safe and well. This includes enhanced cleaning and hygiene practices, recalibrating space, floor markings to ensure social distancing, controlled access to campus buildings and mechanisms to identify and assist individuals and our community more widely if people are unwell. 

We will also explore what contributions ‘test, trace and isolate’ processes and temperature checks at key points on campus can make to safety, amongst other measures such as hand sanitising stations, disinfectant wipes for classroom settings, one way circulation routes and reduced capacities in teaching and social learning spaces.

We know your experience at LSE is shaped outside of the classroom too, and we will offer you a range of exciting opportunities to develop skills and try new things. 

These include giving back through volunteering, developing your entrepreneurial ideas via LSE Generate, shaping your community through LSE Students’ Union activities and societies and our new online public lecture programme. All activity will start from Welcome 2020, which will be delivered digitally and in-person. You can also access thriving regional alumni groups too, which operate across the globe.

We are committed to working in partnership with you to enhance your experiences and Disability and Wellbeing Services, Careers, Student Advice and LSE LIFE will continue to be available to guide you through the next academic year and beyond through excellent online and in-person services where possible.