Teaching and assessment

The majority of courses at LSE are year-long in duration. Teaching takes place in the Autumn and Winter terms, and  exams are held in the first week of January and the Summer term. The year-long structure means that you are able to cover topics in more depth and breadth than in an equivalent single-semester course.

General Course students take four full-unit courses (or the equivalent in half-unit courses), and may pick and choose these from across 300+ options in 19 academic disciplines.

General Course students are assigned to one of the 16 academic departments that offer undergraduate degrees, and are notified of their assignment in late August or early September. This will act as your “home” department during your time at the School, and your academic adviser will be based in this department.

You will have chosen at least one course offered by the department to which you are assigned (or two if you are assigned to the Department of Economics) and we aim to assign each student to a department that reflects their academic interest or major subject of study while at LSE. Please note that your departmental assignment should not restrict your course options or opportunities: you may take any combination of undergraduate courses offered by any department at the School, with just one from your home department (or two from the Department of Economics).

Teaching at LSE takes the form of a mixture of lectures and classes.

Lectures are attended by all the students taking the course, which could include up to several hundred for popular courses. 

Classes, by contrast, consist of no more than 15 students. In your classes you will work through questions, problem sets and issues raised in lectures, and you are also expected to contribute your own independently researched ideas to class discussions. 

The number of formal contact hours will vary with the type of course you are taking but will normally be between 8 and 12 hours per week. At LSE there is a strong focus on independent, self-motivated study. It is expected that you will spend at least another 20 hours per week pursuing independent study.

For guidance about individual courses there are your class teachers, who will hold regular office hours where you can discuss aspects of the course which you may need extra help with, and academics who have overall responsibility for each course.

You will be allocated an academic adviser, who will meet you regularly over the course of the year, receive regular reports from your class teachers and be able to advise on your progress. Your academic adviser is there to help with any academic, administrative or personal questions that you may have during your time with us.

Your General Course academic assessment comprises two components:

• A class grade for each course. This is a summary letter grade obtained from your class teacher at the academic year's end and is often used by home institutions in determining credit transfer. The class grade provides an overall assessment of your work over the course of the year. Class teachers award class grades based on attendance, class participation (engagement and quality), presentations and marks received for essays and/or problem sets. 

• An exam grade for each course: This is a separate letter grade based solely on the marks your receive for the summative assessment (exam and/or assessed essays) for each of your courses. Exam grades are provided solely to students who complete the programme. They appear only on the final end-of-year transcript, irrespective of when the exam/assessment was sat/submitted.     

• Both grades will appear on your LSE transcript. Transcripts are issued only to students who complete the programme.  LSE does not average the class and exam grades into a single mark so it is up to your home institution how they will use them in determining credit transfer and whether they will be factored into your GPA. The marking scheme for converting LSE marks into letter grades for is as follows:

Transcripts are issued in mid August and can be accessed by students via Digitary CORE. Transcripts are issued only to students who complete the programme - General Course students who leave the programme early will not receive a transcript and/or exam grades. 

Digitary allows you to easily share your digitally-signed online transcript with, for example, potential employers and academic institutions, 24 hours a day. The recipients of your transcript can then quickly and confidently verify the legally valid and tamper-evident document.

We will send a transcript to your home institution at the beginning of September of the year you completed the General Course; you do not need to request this.