Spilling the Tea on University (LSE | 5 WORST THINGS | HONEST REVIEW) 

If you would like to see more content related to university, or landing jobs/internships at top firms, subscribe to this channel and turn on the bell notifications to be INSTANTLY notified, because I post content every week (giving you seriousss tips, techniques and info)

the fact that I'm planning to go to LSE next year and watching this video freaked me tf out

Pls do an opposite video as well: 5 best things about LSE. Also I really like your beard and I believe you should grow it out. 🙌🏻

This guy is brilliant! Great character, delivers clear and concise points - a very helpful video for a potential LSE applicant like myself.

can confirm construction has NOT stopped since this video was made. Writing this from the 1st floor ‘silent zone’ of the library 👍🏼🥲

A really good summary of LSE haha and solid editing! As an international student at LSE, I can definitely agree with the competitiveness part of LSE.

Omg I love this video. This is one of the best LSE reviews on RU-vid. Thank you Ali!!!

Thank you so much for these videos! This channel is soo helpful especially right now as I’m in y12

This was actually insightful! Thanks for posting

Thank you for making this!

Thanks for the honest sharing!

Hmm very interesting, I never knew current PhD students teach. Would love to see the 5 best things about LSE. Thank you!

Attended LSE as an international student from Southeast Asia. Spot on comment about the competitive culture! I also thought that the school could use a “real” campus (and a beautiful one at that) and more open space for students’ psychological health, given how stressful the academics were. Overall the studies and experience were very worthwhile, though.

The last one when he said 12-15 people I was thinking "that's not too bad... in my undergrad I had 30-40 people in my class" sometimes we had to bring chairs from other classroms. I felt my third world right in the face.

one of my favourite things about it was how smooth it was to skate on... Also I heard while I was there that the student satisfaction is so low because it was almost 'cool' to enter low scores on the feedback reviews. All that did was keep us from the rankings we otherwise would have had and it didn't even factually reflect how (most) of the students felt. At least that was my anecdotal experience...

Thank you for this video!

Great video again bro! Could you possibly make a video on your experience with the culture/environment at elite city firms being from an ethnic minority and/or lower social background? That would be great!

Hey Ali, thanks so much for the great content! I'm a prospective student learning more about LSE and your vids have been so honest/helpful. I was hoping to ask--in your experience, do you get the impression that a competitive culture at LSE is ubiquitous across all the courses, or are some of the courses more chill/collaborative than others (or conversely, more cutthroat)? cheers from the USA 🙌

Thanks for demystifying this. I am at SOAS and our administration is really bad. Was wondering if the same problems are faced at lse

Hi, I really want to study at LSE but IELTS SAT and Pearson BTECh level 3 are enough? When is deadline for all documents? I want to take SAT in April.Is it late or not

loved your video. how widespread do you think the teaching quality problem is? because i had a few friends complain about it but then I realised they are all studying finance. Please make me feel better about choosing imperial and tell me it's worse than it is here

Main reason I applied to unis close to home rather than London was because of how expensive it is. Lucky I still live near some good unis

What would you say is the philosophical or ideological point of view of LSE when it comes to teach economic policy?

If you could review more universities, that would be amazing!!

This dude literally complaint about the class size of 12 when my class size is never below 100 (sometimes 200+)

😂 spot on. Indonesian LSE alumni here. Interesting way of viewing us, coming all the way from southeast asia to study there. It's still a privilege to study at the LSE. But the positive aspects of studying at LSE still outweighs the negative. All the best for your career and your future.

very sick video thanks

As an international student I would like to share my personal opinion on the sense of community at LSE. Coming from a completely different culture, it was intimidating to try to blend in with local students. We can easily be discouraged to make friends with the local or other international students, especially when there is language and cultural barriers. I think these factors are more important than the hardworking nature of many Asian students when we are trying to find out what may have contributed to the correlation between hight international student rate and a lack of community.

Great video Ali! I'm about to finish my MSc dissertation from the LSE. I agree with your opinion about the worst things about the LSE, and I also want to share my views on certain points. 1. The Competitive Culture - As a Japanese person who majored in theoretical physics, even did I think the people here were super competitive. I found that the vibe at the school was generated by the personality of the people studying, i.e., the culture comes from the future bankers or consultants. 2. Teaching Quality - I think I have to agree with the lack of supervision of the teaching. They really don't seem to care about student essays until they grade it. Or at times, the marking scheme seems to be very unclear. I received distinctions in assignments and coursework I didn't expect, and a merit that I thought I would receive a distinction. However, I feel sorry that you had such an education experience. At the MSc level, I never experienced this. Do I recommend another miserable year at the LSE, not so sure. Maybe I was lucky, I was always inspired by the lecturer. Looking forward to your next video, and I definitely will recommend this channel to my friends who are thinking about the LSE.

I'm moving in tomorrow... I'm so worried that it won't be social enough now! I need social events to keep me going 😳

not my meal deals being £3 and you're saying I'm going to spend TWELVE pounds

You could also add terrible IT administration and services as a negative. The entire architecture is painfully outdated to the extent that I initially doubted web pages legitimacy on whether it's an LSE site or a scam page.

hahah 12 People would be a dreaaaaam at my Uni. We are like 200 in thee smallest group :D

Can a person from a non Russell group uni get a TC in a City or Magic Circle law firm? (say, a uni around 60th in the league tables)

I was a PhD student who taught at the LSE for 3 years - this is rather standard practice everywhere in the world. Something I will say is that my students got a lot more advantages and opportunities compared to students at other Russell Group universities in my experience (from undergrad and master’s at other universities). For example, most LSE courses offer the chance for feedback on formative assessment. This does not happen everywhere, and without PhD students teaching it would be almost impossible to deliver this. During my undergrad and master’s there was never any formative assessment, just final assessments. Students at LSE also, often, are able to get more contact hours all together because of the PhD teaching provision. You mention your friends having classes of around 5 students, but I’m not sure where this happens outside of tutorials at oxbridge? We actually prefer class sizes of around 12-15, because you then have enough students to create a meaningful class debate with a range of perspectives with students who have read different texts and taken different courses who can bring all of that knowledge together - which is the whole point of a class. In most instances, the class is not about going over the set texts in a straight forward way, you should be going beyond that towards higher level discussions where knowledge is applied in a broader sense. That is not to say classes shouldn’t be a place to raise questions on the texts, but they should be questions that will have a usefulness to the class - for more specific questions about the text I’d usually recommend office hours or peer-discussion before class.

No you are definitely wrong. The competitive academic environment comes from lots of UK students as well. Thats how I feel stressed in my university.

Now i don't know whether or not to applyyyyyyy

I disagree. The people are the community and it’s easy to make lots of friends. At least on the post graduate school it’s far less cutthroat than other schools. London has grown too expensive but that’s London - not just the L.S.E.

Cmon 💫

too late mate, i’m starting next week.

One thing I want to comment is about the cause of the lack of community, you said that a large proportion of international students is a necessary but insufficient condition for that. I know you want the argument to sound softer, but think about the definition, if it's a necessary condition, that means every school with a lack of community must entail that the school had a large body of international students, in other words, whenever there's a lack of community in a school, there always are a large body of international students to blame. But there are certainly schools where you don't have any international students but still has a lack of community, e.g. school simply with a bad discipline system. Conversely, if you say that a large body of international students is a nearly sufficient but not necessary condition, I personally think it's quite plausible, for a school like LSE that has international students coming from lots of countries, it's quite common that students would form their own small group, highly probably by country of origin or ethnicity. Given the above explanation, sufficient might be softer than necessary, despite it sounds conversely.

Don't go to this uni it's terrible