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LSE: Question 2: How your studies prepared you

Part of 4,000 characters total; 350 character minimum

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?
What it’s really asking

This question links your current coursework, qualifications, and the academic skills you have built to the demands of the LSE course. It is about evidence that you can handle the rigour, drawn from what you have actually studied.

Why they ask it

LSE courses are demanding and quantitative or theory-heavy depending on the subject. The tutor wants proof you have the foundations, and that you have reflected on what your studies taught you, not just that you took the classes. American applicants should translate their curriculum (AP, IB, or high school) into this academic frame.

Three ways in
Map a topic to a skill

Pick a specific topic from your current studies and show how it built a skill the LSE course needs, like modelling, proof, or source analysis.

Use a project as evidence

Explain how a piece of coursework or an extended essay taught you to work like a student in this discipline.

Find the open question

Show where your formal study left a question unanswered, which then pushed you toward wider reading.

✕  Weak opening

“I am currently studying maths, economics, and history, all of which are relevant to my chosen course.”

✓  Strong opening

“Writing my AP Statistics project on housing data taught me that the hardest part of analysis is not the regression, but deciding which variables you can trust.”

✦ Annotated example · How studies prepared me. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
Mathematics has been the most useful preparation, less for the formulas than for the discipline of justifying every step. 1Studying calculus taught me to think in terms of marginal change, so when I later met the idea of marginal utility it felt like a familiar tool wearing new clothes. 2Statistics has been equally formative: a project comparing exam results across two cohorts taught me how easily a difference in averages can vanish once you account for sample size and variation. 3That lesson in scepticism now shapes how I read every chart in the news. 4History gave me the complementary skill of causation under uncertainty. Arguing about whether the gold standard deepened the Great Depression forced me to weigh competing explanations and accept that evidence is often incomplete. 5Together, these subjects taught me to model precisely, to doubt my own data, and to argue from evidence. 6I do not arrive fluent in economics, but I arrive equipped with the habits it is built on.
  1. 1Connects a school subject to economics through the underlying skill (rigorous reasoning), not just the syllabus. LSE wants to see qualifications used as evidence, not listed.
  2. 2Shows transfer of a specific mathematical concept (the margin) into economic reasoning, proving the preparation is real and not decorative.
  3. 3Demonstrates hands-on quantitative work and an understanding of why correlation alone is weak evidence, a core economic instinct.
  4. 4A short reflective line showing the learning generalised beyond the classroom, which signals critical engagement.
  5. 5Brings in a second subject and links it to an economic debate, showing the applicant connects disciplines rather than treating them as separate boxes.
  6. 6Synthesises the strands into the three habits the course actually demands, making the preparation feel deliberate.
Stuck? Start here
  • Which topic in your current curriculum maps most directly onto a skill the LSE course will demand?
  • What did a specific project or essay teach you about how to think in this field, beyond the content itself?
  • Where did your formal studies stop short and leave you wanting to know more?
Before you submit
  • Does each qualification you mention come with a skill or insight, not just a subject name?
  • Have you translated your school system into terms an LSE tutor will recognise as rigorous?
  • Is there a clear link from what you studied to what the LSE course requires?

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