We will use this space for announcements for the coming academic year.

You can find the latest news from the Graduate Admissions Office here.

To secure your offer, you will need to pay a non-refundable deposit of 10% of the tuition fee. Please read the following information carefully to ensure you are aware of the terms of this agreement. The size of the deposit is a proportionate reflection of the amount of resources the Department of Finance (“the Department”) uses during the admissions process and to prepare or your arrival in the Department.

For offers issued before May, the deposit will be due within 28 days of receiving your offer email from Graduate Admissions. For offers issued from May onwards, the deadlines will be as follows:

• May: within 21 days
• June: within 14 days
• July and August: within 7 days

Your personal deadline date will be specified in an email from one of the Department’s Programme Administrators, Oliver Dowling. Your place is not secured until you have paid this non-refundable deposit, which is specific to your MSc Finance and Risk programme. You should not confuse the terms of it with any other deposit or payment arrangement required by the School.

Payment methods

You need to make this payment in your Student Payment Portal.

• Log in here: Student Payment Portal
• Locate "Deposit/Pre-Enrolment Fee"
  • Select "Pay whole amount?" and proceed with payment
• Oliver Dowling will email you to confirm your place after your payment has been processed
  • Depending on the method, payments can take 2-7 working days to be processed
• Guidance on using the portal can be found here

The deposit is non-refundable and non-transferable. This arrangement means that subject to the circumstances set out below, the School will not refund our deposit if after you have accepted your place on the MSc Finance and Risk programme you decided to withdraw from it. Moreover, you will not be able to transfer the money to pay part or all of a deposit or tuition fees for another programme of study at the School.

The Department will consider the refunding of part or all of a deposit only under the following exceptional circumstances:

• If a student is unsuccessful in their visa application. In this instance, the student must provide a copy of an immigration refusal notice to the Department, along with evidence that they had started the visa application process in a timeframe, and made a reasonable effort to complete the process, to join the programme.
• If a student does not meet the academic offer condition/s set by the Department, and the Department does not waive the condition/s. The student must provide evidence to the Department to show that they have made a reasonable attempt to meet the condition/s. English language conditions are not considered academic conditions.

Contact:

Unlike your programme fees, the deposit fee is administrated by the Department of Finance, so please contact Oliver Dowling if you have any questions about the deposit fee.

Email: O.Dowling1@lse.ac.uk

You need to complete the Offer Reply Form to formally accept your offer. This is available in your Graduate Applicant Portal.

You can find further details here.

Please complete the Financial Undertaking Form to indicate how you expect to pay your fees, and the details of any organisation providing financial assistance. You should aim to submit this by 31 July at the latest.

This is available in your Graduate Applicant Portal.

We have a dedicated MSc Finance and Risk Offer Holders LinkedIn group which you can join before arrival. Please note that this group is not monitored by the Department or current students. To join, just click the link below (you will need a LinkedIn account first). Approvals may take a couple of days.

Join the LinkedIn group

We have paired you with a member of the current class, who is happy to receive your questions about the programme, LSE, and London life from a student's point of view.

Please check your “MSc F&R Current Student Buddy & LinkedIn Group” email for details.

To become a fully registered student, you will be required to undertake a two-stage registration process: Online pre-enrolment and Campus Enrolment.

You will receive further information about the registration process in summer 2025.

Campus Enrolment is scheduled for Monday 8 September 2025. This takes place in person on the LSE campus and is where LSE will check your official documents.

You can find further details on what you will need to bring here.

The full-time pre-sessional programme will begin shortly after Campus Enrolment. You will receive more information about this by email in early September. Your first three weeks will include:

• An essential pre-sessional course covering core statistics and microeconomics review, programming and accounting techniques
• Careers guidance and advice to prepare you for the recruitment process - you must prepare a draft CV before arriving
• Networking skills, teamwork sessions, presentation skills and social events, including with alumni
• City Speaker Series – listen to and engage with senior, leading professionals working in a range of City career areas, exclusively addressing your programme
• Deutsche Bank Insight Day - an opportunity to hear from senior figures within the bank

It is important to ensure you begin the visa application process as soon as possible from June onwards. All students who require a visa should review the material on the LSE Student Advice and Engagement Team visa advice webpage.

Please note if you are on a Tier 4 visa there will be a number of restrictions on working while you are studying at the LSE. You can find more information on the visa advice webpage. Please pay particular attention to the section 'Working on a visa in the UK'.

You can find out how to contact the Student Advice and Engagement Team here.

LSE accommodation

You can find out more about the different accommodation options on the LSE website. Both LSE-only halls and intercollegiate halls (shared with students from other universities) are available. You can also learn more about LSE residences by checking out this Halls at a Glance guide. It gives an overview of the halls of residence, including details about types of rooms, location, catering options and prices. More general guidance is also available from the LSE Accommodation Office. We encourage you to reserve your accommodation as early as possible.

The application system for LSE halls will open in February 2025.

Private accommodation

London is a wonderful city to live in and you may prefer to live in private housing. There are many great neighbourhoods in London, so finding private accommodation can seem daunting at first. The Accommodation Office can assist you with finding private housing and advise on student-friendly options.

You can find information on tuition fee payment deadlines on the LSE website. MSc Finance and Risk is a classified as a “Standard Programme”.

You will also find instructions on how to make a payment via the website.

Deutsche Bank are generous sponsors of this programme and have contributed significantly to the practitioner seminars which run throughout the core course, FM403 Management and Regulation of Risk, and have proved very beneficial and popular with students. Topics discussed have included market risk, credit risk, legal risk, recovery and resolution and operational risk. There are also opportunities for students to network with the practitioners after these seminars. More recently we have visited Deutsche Bank during the pre-sessional programme for an Insight Day. Students meet Chief Risk Officer Stuart Lewis, partake in a practical risk exercise as well as meet with junior associates for a Q&A and networking session.

Deutsche Bank has various graduate programmes (open to LSE graduates and graduates from the wider public) and in previous years some of our students have been offered internships or permanent positions via these programmes.

Further information about Deutsche Bank’s involvement in the MSc Finance and Risk programme will be available during the September pre-sessional programme.

You can find out more about the Careers opportunities offered by the Department of Finance and LSE Careers on our dedicated Careers page.

You may also be interested in our additional careers resources:

• LSE Careers CVs, cover letters and application forms
• CVs for experienced hires
• Video interviews
• Employment sector information: banking and investment

The programme also boasts an extensive community of alumni, with graduates going on to work across the financial sector. We run a programme of events each year to give students various opportunities to network with alumni, and to ensure that alumni can remain connected to the Department.

There are also several opportunities during the programme to get to know students on the other Master’s programmes run by the Department of Finance.

One of the first important things that you will do is choose your optional courses. You will be given information about different courses at the Orientation and various Departmental course guide sessions in the first week.

You can also find course guide information online. You will be given more information on choosing courses, and how to choose courses, at the beginning of the year. An Academic Mentor will be assigned to you, and you will be able to meet with your Academic Mentor to discuss your personal course choices.

In addition to your MSc programme you will have opportunity to gain from what is called the 'LSE experience'. Read more about LSE's vibrant campus life and diverse student body here.

To find out more about life at LSE you may wish to visit the LSE Students' Union. The SU is host to a wide range of societies, from sporting, to cultural, to academic - including a number of finance-oriented societies such as:

• Alternative Investments
• Asset Wealth Management
• Green Finance
• Microfinance
• Venture Capital

LSE hosts a public lecture programme featuring over 200 events each year, where some of the most influential figures in the social sciences can be heard, including internationally recognised academics, heads of state and leading professionals. Upcoming events are all featured on the LSE events website.

Previous speakers include Christine Lagarde, Nelson Mandela, Angela Merkel, Robert J. Schiller and Muhammad Yunus.

Lectures and classes can take place any time between 9.00-19.00, Monday to Friday. The usual format of teaching for taught postgraduate students at LSE is via weekly two hour lectures and separate one hour supporting classes.

Lectures can range in size from 40 to 200 students depending upon the course. Classes usually have 15-20 students, and are either taught by the course lecturer or tutorial fellows. Classes are used to work through problem sets and exercises related to the material covered in that week's lecture. Students will be required to prepare answers to the week's assigned problem sets before each class.

Examinations: Most exams at LSE take place during the Spring Term, although some elective courses taken outside the Department of Finance may have exams in January. The Spring exam period takes place from late April until early June. The exam timetable changes each year and is released by the School in Winter Term.

Summative coursework: Some courses may require class participation, group presentations, submission of problem sets or homework assignments, group and individual projects, and in-class assignments, which will make up a small percentage of your final grade. This is known as 'summative coursework'.

Formative work: At LSE any work which is set but does not contribute towards the final course mark is known as formative work. Formative work is used to inform students how they are doing on the course and if they are understanding the concepts taught in lectures. Some formative work is informal, via the setting of problem sets that the lecturer will work through in the next lecture, however most courses will also ask for a piece of work to be submitted and then graded. This is usually to prepare students for the summative assignments.

For students who are new to studying in the UK it is helpful to note the grading system used at LSE. At postgraduate level the following scale is used:

Students should note that marks above 70 are very good, and anything in the high 70s is exceptional. LSE does not mark on a curve and grades cannot be 'negotiated'.