31,286 discussions, 145 guides
London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)
31,286 discussions, 145 guides
London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)
The London School of Economics
PO Box 13401
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 6789
1895
PuLSE
Student radio is a Mecca for music enthusiasts, showjocks and exhibitionists of all kinds, but it is not only for those who want to get on air. Behind the scenes are an indispensable crew of producers, writers, advertising whiz-kidz and marketing moguls. Without their input no station could subsist and no programmes could be made. So whatever your interest and whatever you talent, PuLSE NEEDS YOU!
Current plans for PuLSE are to provide a permanent service that will be heard around LSE, mainly the Quad, Cafe, Shop, Tuns at designated times of the day. Licensing laws allow PuLSE to go on FM across London for a month a year.
From the side splitting fun of Liquid Lunch with Jimmy and Fletch to their soap opera: Houghton Street, this is a friendly team that is open to new members. No PuLSE, no life.
BEAVER
The Beaver is a weekly paper that derives its name from the LSE logo. Any other interpretation - no sniggerring at the back - bears no relation to the papers actual content. The organ itself include sections on the School, student politics, music, film, theatre and club reviews, literature and student life. If you represent the LSE in any sports teams, its only a matter of time before you get a slating from the Beaver crew (Im sure this is more of a reflection of the papers down to earth humour than the quality of the teams).
The Beaver is being dragged, kicking and gnashing its big front teeth, into the 1990s, steady on guys, a decade behind isnt too bad. Their website http://www.the-beaver.org is a colourful improvement on the blue and white rag. We advise that you type the web address in, rather than typing Beaver into the search engines!
If you feel that you want to help the team get their issues out on time then they are in C023. Tongue must be pressed firmly in cheek to get along here!
John F. Kennedy - US President
Carlos The Jackal - Terrorist
Mick Jagger - 'Rolling Stones'
Maurice Saatchi - Advertising
Loyd Grossman - Cooking
George Soros - Finance
Cherie Blair QC - PM's wife
Sir David Attenborough - Broadcasting
and many, many more....
The Three Tuns - Still in good shape after it £150,000 refurb a couple of years ago, TTT is the Union's traditional pub and social focal point during the week.
The Underground - Nestled under the Tuns, the Underground is an especially popular haunt on a Friday night, during the week Societies societies take it over for their own events.
The Beaver's Retreat - Popular with the academics. Expensive.
New Developments - A new Union bar and Coffee bar are being, or have been built. The bar is a mish mash of blue and aluminium which will be used as a new Ents club venue on Fridays and Saturdays. The new cafe is an excellent place to hang out and enjoy cakes and coffee.
The largest night of the week is by far the Friday Night Crush, in the Underground. Open until late this night really does get the students out; perhaps because there is little to match it during the week.
On Wednesdays there is LSE Cocktails, which is popular as a mid week stress buster, but it is not quite as big as Friday night. During the week there is also live sports screened, quiz nights and quiet drinking.
The largest Ball of the year is the Graduation Ball, which was held at the Savoy last year. Many societies also have Balls and other formal events. Students may also attend the ULU functions.
The LSE is a hotbed of political, cultural and academic societies. It seems that every political organisation and every cause is supported. But having said that, we would not have expected anything less from one of the premier colleges in the world. Once known for its left wing leanings, the LSE seems now to have changed its views slightly (perhaps because so many graduates get jobs in the City), and nowdays both right, left and middle are represented equally. Many of the college's 130 nations are represented in some way.
One thing that does strike you about the LSE's society list is that there are very few general, fun societies. They all seem to be either academic or intellegent in some way. The only one we could find was the Jelly Baby Society. We assume that this is in appreciation of the sweets, and it does not have some deeper meaning!!
Sports clubs are popular at the LSE and it tends to be the best way for them to relieve pressure...though, I am sure many can think of other ways. Recent successes have included the rugby and football teams.
The University is always being awarded something or other, and it would be impossible to keep up with. The LSE ranks number 2 after Cambridge for research. The best place to look for up to date information is the LSE website.
However, we did hear from one local 'lady of the night' that LSE students should be presented with the best tipping award. I guess its all about supply and demand...
If you live outside Greater London - guaranteed 100
Try to make sure that you stay in halls of residence, you are pretty much guaranteed places in your first year and you will make a lot of good friends. The downside of this being that halls can be very noisy and claustrophobic. In general the halls of residence at the LSE are rather grand but are scattered all over the City.
Bankside - The newest, biggest hall, located on the Southside of the Thames, is equipped with all the following pros: Big rooms, postgrads and undergrads on different floors, ensuite bathrooms, multigym, daily kitchen cleaning, good maintenance, computer room, shuttlebus service from outside and the best food at the School. ...and the following cons: You have to pay for it - rent approaches £100 per week plus other costs for services, a history of wild parties means no more parties now - ever and the nearest supermarket is at least 15 mins away. Over and above all that though the important news is that according to the best informed sources Bankside's bar, The Belching Beaver is great. Although the hall is behind the Tate Modern which is good the front looks out over a big construction project boring a tunnel under the Thames which is pretty noisy and at the back there's a massive site where the new IPC media HQ is being built. Scheduled for completion in 2007 this will mean a pretty noisy environment for a while.
Butler's Wharf - Very swanky hall on the riverside near Tower Bridge in Shad Thames. Decent local pubs and bars make up for lack of a hall bar, rooms are poky, but this in mind, you'll probably get more work done and spend more time getting out and about on the Town. Carr-Sanders - The West End hall, completely run down - a bit manky but oozing atmosphere. It has a bar and a common room and a rooftop garden. Cheapest hall in terms of food, drink and rent. Close-knit community but not for those who miss luxury in life. You'll love it or hate it. Passfield - Georgian Terrace in Bloomsbury. Costly rent - but this includes meals which have something to be desired apparently. Mainly double and treble rooms - so you will have to share here. You'll also be sharing the cosy hall bar. The bars at ULU and UCL as well as fast food restaurants are thus popular with Passfield residents. Gets very hot in the summer. High Holborn - You'll save a fortune on transport costs if you live here. You are within walking distance of your lecture theatres and within stumbling distance of the Union's bars. Your extortionate rent pays for enormous rooms, new furniture and talking lifts. You will be comfortable here if you can tolerate the jobsworth security, hall management who fine you for leaving a cup in the kitchen sink, and cooking for yourself. Roseberry - The 'Goldilocks' residence, not too expensive, or unsociable, or uncomfortable but just right. Roseberry is the compromise candidate.
London is the pub, club and social centre of Britain. It would be impossible for unofficial-guides.com to give a comprehensive guide to London, simply because there is not enough room and that it is always changing. What we do advise is that you buy a copy of Time Out and Time Out, the Students Guide to London. They will give you a better understanding of what London is like...from a non-tourist point of view, and it will keep you at the cutting edge of the London social scene. From any angle just remember, 'when a man is tired of London he is tired of life' and Dr Johnson's been dead 200 years.
The London School of Economics is on Portugal Street just off Kingsway in Holborn. Nearby is the HQ of the BBC World Service, the Inland Revenue, the Theatre Royal, the Royal Courts of Justice and Kings College. If you're a film buff, the LSE Union recommends the Curzon in Mayfair to the more extravagant - it still has boxes, or the Prince Charles in Leicester Square for extremely cheap student prices. For theatre goers, check out the new Globe Theatre - go in the morning for better deals.
Halls of Residence are scattered all over the City, so you're bound to take in a wide radius of fun or long and fume choking journeys to lectures every day - depending on the way you think.
Don't bother. Some halls of residence have parking spaces but only the wealthiest students will be able to afford the parking ticket bill of parking elsewhere. Top tip: a recent test case brought by Marina Vine, established that the clampers must be able to prove that the driver must have seen the "cars will be clamped" sign - years of court battles will ensue, though, if you want to recover your declamping fee!
No specifically dedicated branch but there are holes in the wall all over the place. The choice is yours!
As one would imagine, being in central London means that the School's buildings are stacked high. Accordingly there are plenty of lifts for disabled students but modification is needed in the form of more ramps to enable access to the lifts! There is a Disabled Support Officer, a Society for the Enlightenment of Able-Bodied Students, a Disabled Students' Fund. On the academic side, there are braille and recording facilities.
The Union Shop, occupies two levels of the Union building and boasts food, sweets, stationery, clothing, and souvenirs. Sports equipment can be rented out and there is a new music stand - student prices apply of course.
Thanks to the recent refurbishment, a new copy shop has been built - for copying, laminating and binding. Prices are, I believe very reasonable.
Interested economics students come from far and wide to browse the shelves of the Economist's Bookshop, the poor sods can't find their recommended texts anywhere else (without waiting for a fortnight for them to be imported from America) - so count yourself lucky. Being in Central London means access to books isn't really a problem anyway.
On site: multigym, circuit room, fitness centre (NEW), 3 squash courts, badminton court and snooker table. Out of town, at Berrylands the schools owns 25 acres, including playingfields, tennis courts, croquet lawn and pavillion with bar and restaurant. Berrylands is 40 minutes on the train.
On yer bike! Everything you could possibly want is within a stone's throw distance (unless you're Welsh), so just put one leg in front of the other or whistle.
Lincoln's Inn Fields, overlooked by the chambers of the nation's high-browed barristers is the nearest, if a bit small, green space. There are a few tennis courts as well if you fancy a knockaround during the summer months. You're looking at a long journey if you need to find open expanse, the LSE is cramped, even a bit poky to those used to the big outdoors but you come to the LSE for lively atmosphere not peace and quiet!
Located just off Chancery Lane, the LSE library contains some 4,000,000 books and includes study places for some 1340 people. Any student studying Economics at a London University will have been to this Mecca of academic wealth during their dissertation research (ed. a few days before the deadline in my case!), so count yourself luck to have it on your doorstep LSE. Opening hours are very accommodating and on line resources are better here than many other libraries. The University of London's Senate House library at Russell Square is also there for LSE student, as well as, for that matter, any other library affiliated to the University of London.
As the BLPES is rather poky and damp, Sir Norman Foster has designed a brand spanking new library.
Then there's the Shaw Library, for alternative library goers who would rather go to a library to eat, smoke and gossip while they read their newspaper - how refreshing!
There is some 24 hour access to computer facilities (about 570 workstations. Online data resources, unique to LSE, are amongst the most comprehensive available. Computers in the more recent halls of residence can be linked to the School network. However computer facilities in the halls of residence are limited and demand exceeds supply (excuse the irony), Bankside Hall is the best bet for those who want to chat on the internet all night.
Training courses are available, advanced research and teaching applications are provided.
The Students Union runs an Advice Centre. This employs three staff that each have several years experience in the field of welfare. They can provide legal information on consumer, housing, employment, immigration and disability rights.
The Centre also provides a free counselling service, publishes a housing list for all looking for private accommodation, and afternoon drop-in sessions for quick queries.
The LSE Health Centre has four doctors with whom you should register on arrival. There is a counselling service and contraception clinic both of which are free of charge. Appointments can be made to see an osteopath but you will have to pay for this. The resident dentist, will charge you at the going NHS rate, unless in the unlikely event that you are under 19 when it is free.
The LSE Students Union website also provides advice for many different situations. Student Community Action is another port of call for Students and consists of volunteer students working both within and outside the School's Campus.
