Current processing times

This page shows the graduate admissions office processing times for incoming applications, emails and documents. It is updated at least once a day during the week.  

Please bear in mind that around holiday closure dates, and application deadlines, our response and processing times may be slower.

 Last updated: 24 March 2023, 06.18

Applications: 

To get a rough idea of when your application will be processed please make a note of the date when you received the confirmation that your application was submitted and both references received. Then check this page regularly to see which date we are processing applications from (add 2-3 working days if you submitted on a Friday or at the weekend; these applications will be received the following Monday). Once your application has been processed you will receive the final acknowledgement email and be given your unique LSE ID number with instructions on how you can open your LSE for You account to track your application online.

When to expect a response:

Applicants to taught master’s programmes should expect to wait up to eight weeks to receive a decision on their first programme choice. Applicants to research programmes (MPhil/PhD) may have to wait longer than this. Please note, this waiting time begins at the point you receive our acknowledgement email confirming that your application is complete and has been sent to the programme selectors for consideration. 

Documents:

The majority of our conditional offer holders are graduating during the May-August period. It is therefore our peak time to receive and verify final degree transcripts. We will get to your documents, please bear with us.

Please note, we are currently prioritising processing documents which fulfil the academic requirements of conditional offer holders for pre-sessional programmes and for those who register in late August and early September. 

If you already have an unconditional offer, but have sent us documents to fulfil any outstanding document requirements, we will get to your documents shortly, please do bear with us.

Please note, we can only confirm the receipt of documents as they are processed. We cannot confirm receipt of documents waiting to be processed in the queue. Check the main news page for how to send documents. 

Please only contact Graduate Admissions if your documents were received before our current processing date and you have not had notification from us. 

Emails:

Please note, at this time of year we receive in excess of 500 emails a week. If you have already sent an email to us, please bear with us. Please do not send duplicate emails as this slows down the process for everyone.

How Do I...? request forms:

We currently have a high volume of decisions to process, which will take priority over processing How do I...? requests. You may therefore need to wait longer than usual for an update. 

Reinstatement forms shall be processed from the end of August onwards.

CAS and pre-CAS: 

We expect to start issuing CAS from May 2023 onwards.

You do not need to request a pre-CAS. We will issue it automatically once your offer is unconditional and you have submitted your offer reply form and financial undertaking form. It usually takes about a week from when you fulfil all these criteria for us to check your details and issue your pre-CAS, but please refer to the table below for more up-to-date turnaround times. We will issue your CAS once you have confirmed the accuracy of the details contained in your pre-CAS.   

Guidance on UKVI’s current turnaround times can be found here

Please note that we are unable to give specific CAS advice during our Zoom sessions. 

Bookable Zoom sessions:

You can book a Zoom query session with the admissions team by following this link. Please ensure you have checked our web pages and our knowledge base for the answer to your query before booking a Zoom session, as we have limited availability.

LSE for You Application Tracker changes:

The application tracker on LSE shows when updates are made on our database to your application. Confirmations of conditional offers are double checked by the senior staff in the Graduate Admissions Office, and although an applicant’s LFY account may show an update to the status of their offer, the update can only be considered official once an email has been sent to them from GAO. Please bear in mind that this confirmation won't be immediate, as this is a manual process.

Contacting Graduate Admissions

Please ensure that our domain name - lse.ac.uk - is added to your safe senders list. Many of our email responses are database driven and may end up being mis-directed into your junk mail folder.

If you do find any of our emails in any of these folders, please make sure to add the domain @lse.ac.uk to your ‘Safe Senders’ or ‘Never Block’ list (advice available here and here for some common email providers). Emails will be sent to you automatically from our database system once you have begun your online application and as your application progresses through each step in the process (application created; application submitted; application downloaded for processing). We will then send you a further email each time there is an update to the status of your application, including any requests for further information and the programme selectors’ decision on your application. It is essential that you ensure you can successfully receive our emails as soon as you begin your application.