Choosing your courses
Course Availability in the Lent Term
If you have already been offered a place on the full-year General Course for the academic year 2020/21 and your home institution has cancelled study abroad in the Fall, you are eligible to be considered for the General Course Spring Semester 2021 (GCSS21).
Though we are unable to offer the range of courses available on the full-year programme, we’ve worked hard in a short space of time to assemble as extensive a list as possible. Students joining the GCSS21 will have access to over 150 undergraduate courses. These courses are principally Lent Term half-units, but many departments will also, on an exceptional basis, permit GCSS21 students to enter full-unit courses in January 2021.
You can view the full list of courses available to GCSS Students here. Guidance on how to select courses will be sent to eligible students after they have confirmed they wish to switch their offer for the full-year General Course to the GCSS21 programme.
Before reviewing the courses available to GCSS21 students, you should pay attention to the following information:
There are three levels for undergraduate courses at LSE, designated 100, 200 and 300 level:
- 100 level courses are introductory courses suitable for students with no previous undergraduate study in the subject. These are typically taken by LSE students in their first year of study.
- 200 level courses are intermediate courses broadly equivalent to junior year courses in the US. These are typically taken by LSE students in their second and final years.
- 300 level courses are advanced courses equivalent to senior year or master’s courses in the US. These are typically taken by LSE students in their final year.
When selecting your courses, you should be aware of any pre-requisites you need in order to be eligible to enrol. Details of any pre-requisites can be found in the undergraduate course guides.
In addition, because of the tightly constrained nature of degree regulations at LSE, many 300 level courses have ‘unspoken’ or ‘assumed ’pre-requisites where the material covered in 200 level courses is simply taken as a ‘given’ starting point for the 300 level course.
This means that General Course students predominantly take 200 level courses, and we do not usually recommend that students take more than one or two 300 level courses as they are exceptionally demanding.
Many LSE departments will permit GCSS21 students to enter full-year modules in January. This option is not available to full-year General Course students. This means that GCSS21 students are likely to be joining at least one course halfway through the academic year.
Though many courses are naturally designed in two halves, meaning that the material covered in Michaelmas (autumn) Term is not directly related to the material in Lent (spring) Term, some course convenors have already identified a need for GCSS21 students to cover the missed material before they arrive. This may mean completing some introductory readings or watching recorded lectures from the Michaelmas Term.
We will update GCSS21 students with any pre-requisites during the Michaelmas Term.
Some courses require you to obtain the permission of the course convenor in order to enrol on them. This can only be obtained later in the year.
Some departments have capped courses, which means that places will be limited. When the online course selection opens, these courses are offered on a first come first served basis and as soon as the number of students registered reaches the capped number, the status of these courses will change to "full" and no further students will be able to select them.
If you are considering studying economics at LSE, please read the course selection notes in our guide.