Current processing times

This page shows the graduate admissions office processing times for incoming applications, emails and documents, as well as change requests submitted via the Graduate Applicant Portal (GAP). It is updated at least once a day during the working week.  

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

If you submit a change request via the GAP, please bear in mind that it may take some time for us to receive the decision from your programme selector. We will email you with an update as soon as we hear back from them.

 Last updated: 28 November 2023, 07.00

We process applications as soon as they become complete (ie submitted and matched with two references), via a process which runs on working days. 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.

If you do not receive the “LSE Application Processed” email within three working days of receiving the “Application Downloaded” email, please inform us by submitting this webform and selecting the “I cannot locate the link to activate my LFY account” option.

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:

Please note, we are currently prioritising processing documents which fulfil the academic requirements of conditional offer holders and those who will be undertaking a presessional programme.

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

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. Unconditional offer holders can avoid the rush by submitting any requested documents as soon as you receive your offer.

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.

Knowledge base enquiries:

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. Our experience shows that the vast majority of queries can be answered immediately by reference to the knowledge base, offer pack or graduate admissions website.

CAS and pre-CAS: 

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.

Graduate Applicant Portal changes:

The Graduate Applicant Portal 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 portal 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.