written by LSESU's Big Conversation team
When 5,012 new students sat down with LSE's Students Union at enrolment last September, our purpose was not purely to collect data – it was to start a conversation that would help them make the most out of life at LSE.
We collaborated with teams across the School to pick out our best offerings that new students would be interested in. From career advice to clubs, academic guidance to the advice service, and wellbeing to Welcome, this post-enrolment exercise is all about meeting incoming students in person and signposting them to the support they'll need from day one.
Last year's Big Conversation gave the SU our biggest picture yet of new students’ hopes and worries as they start at LSE and will shape our Welcome 2026 plans.
What we learned
Students told us the most-anticipated parts of starting at LSE were:
- learning about their course (40.5%)
- making new friends (39.9%)
- living in London (35.7%)
- joining either a sports club (58.5%) or academic/career society (55.9%).
Preferred ways to connect with their peers
- This cohort chose social events and mixers (60.6%) and informal gatherings like coffee meet-ups (42.3%) as their preferred way to meet peers, demonstrating a clear appetite for the buzzing party events the SU runs throughout Welcome, as well as the department/ programme mixers threaded throughout.
Concerns and biggest interests
- Regarding nerves, managing academic workload was the dominant worry (34.9%), with making friends and fitting in coming through strongly in qualitative responses – particularly from Postgraduates, International students, and those moving to a new city
- Career support emerged as their single biggest interest: 55.9% of respondents wanted career advice and networking opportunities ahead of academic guidance (44.3%) and other forms of support.
How different groups responded
- Black students were notably more worried about academic workload than other groups
- Postgraduates were excited for all things academic
- Undergraduates were most excited about building their community
We note that roughly a quarter of respondents felt they didn't need any support at all: this is a figure we suspect was impacted by the face-to-face setting of the conversations, and something we’re taking into account for our methodology this year.
Signposting and providing bespoke support
Every student who took part walked away with a bespoke signposting sheet tailored to what they'd said they needed – whether that was Hardship Funding details, the Advice Service, sports clubs, or the Career service.
The QR codes on these sheets corresponded to a link relevant to their answers in the conversation. The top 5 links were:
- LSESU Social Events
- LSESU Work With Us
- LSESU Societies
- LSESU Hardship Funding
- LSESU Clubs
This seemed largely in-line with what we would expect from responses: a focus on community building and career opportunities. The only outlier was the Hardship Funding item, as most students did not disclose that they’d want financial support.
Sharing insights with departments
We also presented the findings from the survey responses to every academic department, showing them how their students responded against the overall cohort.
The results were also communicated across the SU's committee structure to instruct how we deploy resources for Welcome 2026, as well as throughout the year.
Changes for Welcome 2026
This year, we're sharpening our questions to avoid duplication with other LSE feedback mechanisms, as well as to pull out more about students’ discovery and signposting needs from each conversation.
We have consulted with our student Big Conversation facilitators and reflected on verbatims about Big Conversation gathered by MRI’s Welcome Survey.
Some headline changes include:
- Saving the trees: last year’s bespoke signposting sheet is being replaced by a personalised follow-up email with tailored links and content. We piloted this for Welcome Back in January 2026 and it landed really well. With a bigger team this year, we now have the ability to send out this tailored signposting in a much shorter timeframe.
- Pre-arrival comms: by sending out pre-arrival comms covering the purpose and setting of Big Conversation, students will know what the project is before they arrive. This will help prepare them, and hopefully prompt them, to think about what they need from their first year at LSE and take the conversation in their stride.
- Tackling N/A responses: on sensitive questions like finances and wellbeing, we're providing physical info sheets so students can take information away discreetly – addressing the social-desirability pull that pushes some students toward "I'm fine" answers in a face-to-face setting. We know from the link clicks last year that Hardship Funding was a popular item that wasn’t verbally disclosed.
- Improving accessibility: we've consulted our student facilitators from last year, as well as considered responses from focus groups we conducted with disabled students this year, and are acting on this feedback to make the Big Conversation experience work better for more students.
Accessing your department-level data
The full report is available on request. If you'd like a department-level breakdown for your team, please get in touch with Jacob Pepper (j.pepper@lse.ac.uk), Minty Dong (z.dong10@lse.ac.uk), or Danielle Quilty (d.quilty@lse.ac.uk).