Why LSE Summer School is an excellent investment in your career

A personal experience on the various benefits of participating in LSE Summer School

Being a student is an investment phase of your life. You spend years attending classes, studying, and learning various skills in order to earn degrees that’ll be useful for your future career. The educational processes also take place outside the classrooms of your academic institutions through internships, certification courses, or courses at different academic institutions. The last category includes exchange programmes and summer schools, such as that of LSE. I grouped the advantages of the LSE Summer School into three main areas according to my personal experiences and will discuss them in this blog. These areas are the inclusiveness of the courses, the contents of the courses, and the credibility of LSE as an institution. As a PhD student, I have an unusual profile for a Summer School participant (most participants are bachelor’s or master’s degree students), so I’m hopeful that this blog will be helpful to everyone intending to apply for LSE Summer School, regardless of the stage of education or career.

Inclusiveness of the courses

The courses at the LSE Summer School are inclusive both in terms of the range of applicants they’re open to, and the timing of the courses. As long as you have an offer of a place from a a university, the Summer School places no restriction on your level or type of study. Depending on the course you apply for, you might be required to have taken the relevant prerequisite courses. Even though I applied for the course MG220: Corporate and Organisational Strategy as a STEM student, it was sufficient that I had previously taken a couple of courses in engineering management. I was especially grateful for this, as the main motivation for attending Summer School was to gain new insight into the field of management for my future career. At Summer School, I met students from numerous fields and even people who had graduated and were running their own businesses. In terms of timing, you can choose the period(s) during which to participate in the Summer School quite flexibly, as there are three different sessions - each consisting of a total of three weeks - spread throughout the summer. I also found this very beneficial since I could combine attending a conference earlier in the summer with attending the third session of Summer School. If you wish, you may also attend multiple sessions at Summer School like some of my classmates, who were attending their second or third sessions.

Content of the courses

When was the last time you were able to concentrate on learning just one thing for an extended period of time? Many of us often multitask by learning one thing today, another thing tomorrow, and returning to the previous thing the next day. The Summer School enables you to focus and learn one subject area for an entire session, and you’re taught and aided along the way by world-class academics and course material. As long as you put in the required time and effort to attend lectures and classes, complete assignments, and study you’ll be left feeling very knowledgeable about the course by the end of the session. I was very satisfied with my course, and so were most of my classmates and students who took other courses that I spoke with.

Credibility of LSE as an institution

With a history of nearly 130 years and several Nobel Prize laureates, LSE’s reputation precedes the institution. It is also home to the British Library of Political and Economic Science, or the LSE library, the largest library in the world devoted to the social sciences. During the welcome reception for the Summer School, a member of staff told a humorous anecdote about LSE’s universal renown. According to her, lines in plays performed in theatres are altered to fit the locality. For instance, a play in the UK may refer to a character eating a bar of Dairy Milk, while in the US, the same character would instead be eating a bar of Hershey’s. She said that this rule apparently doesn’t apply to LSE, because she saw the same play in two different countries, and the reference to LSE remained the same in both. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the story, but you get the point!

 

By attending the LSE Summer School you’ll make numerous connections that lead to new friendships and unforgettable memories. Additionally, you’ll forever be associated with LSE as an alum, which can help you stand out in the eyes of prospective employers. All these will potentially open new windows of opportunities in the short-term and/or future, making the LSE Summer School an excellent investment in your career in more ways than you might expect.

 

This blog was written by one of our 2022 Student Ambassadors, who are here to share their stories and help you understand the summer school experience at LSE.