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London Business School LBS MBA | Deadlines, Fees, Essays

London Business School LBS MBA

LBS Deadlines, Fees, Essays

London Business School extends to its MBA recipients the opportunity to experience a totally global and flexible program. The LBS MBA can be tailored to suit the needs of the student to be completed in either a 15, 18 or 21 months format.

Consistently ranked among the top business schools in UK and the world, it has a strong global reputation.

The LBS brand can have a huge impact on your career after an MBA as is evidenced from a consistently outstanding performance of their graduating class each year.

Established in 1964, the LBS is UK’s most diverse business school with over 90% students hailing from outside the island. The curriculum too is designed to encourage a global outlook, with international exchanges built into it.

The location of the school in one of the world’s most diverse, vibrant, and networking hubs – London – affords it a unique status as compared to many of its b-school peers.

Obtaining an LBS MBA degree can put wings on your career in more ways than one. If you are looking for your career to take flight, find out how you can be a part of the LBS community.

London Business School MBA

 

LBS MBA Course Structure

Each year, the fresh term begins in August, with a strong focus on laying down a strong groundwork with core courses.

The students thereafter are free to build their specialization expertise using electives, which there are more than 80 to choose from.

The entire MBA program is healthily sprinkled with application learning through various modules.

Projects

The London Core Application Program allows students to apply their learnings in real London based organizations.
Students also undertake Business Projects to work in tandem with companies and faculty members, resolving real-life business issues.

Skill development

Recognizing the demand for future leaders, LBS trains its students to develop leadership skills through their specially designed Leadership Launch module.

LBS also has language learning options to help prepare students for a global workforce.

International touch

The Global Business Experience encourages students to engage with leading companies across the globe.
While the International Exchange program allows students to participate in exchange study options with one of LBS’ 30 b-school partners around the world.

Internship

As with any good business program, the internship period availed in the summer months helps gear students for life after MBA.

Those who have something else on their mind, such as the entrepreneur bug-bite, get to build on their idea through the Entrepreneurship Summer School.

Finally, every LBS student is exposed to the wisdom offered by LBS alumni and industry experts in a Capstone program.

LBS MBA Application Process – How to get into LBS MBA?

As with most MBA programs, admission committees require certain basic fulfilled criteria to ensure a baseline for all applicants. Bear in mind that there are certain exceptions for outstanding applicants.

The basic requirements include an undergraduate degree or equivalent. But LBS does mention that candidates who are able to display significantly meaningful work experience sans any undergrad degree, can also apply.

Similarly, a minimum of two years of work experience is required. However, exceptions can be made for applicants with outstanding academic credentials.

We will talk about exceptions in some detail later. All candidates should have defining skills of team work and a global outlook.

As for the MBA application requirements, all applicants should furnish the following.

  • A one-page CV
  • Two referees
  • GMAT/GRE Score
  • English proficiency proof through test scores of IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge CPE, CAE or PTE Academic score
  • An application fee of about $270
  • University transcripts
  • And finally, LBS MBA essay responses

Read How to get into LBS for MBA, MiM, Executive MBA and What London Business School Looks for in MBA Applicants

LBS MBA Essays – Writing Tips

Essay 1

What are your post-MBA goals and how will your prior experience and the London Business School programme contribute towards these? (500 words)

This is the classic careers essay. Sounds pretty simple at first, but it can be a big challenge trying to narrate your story in under 500 words.

Try to focus on the following elements:

Have a coherent, well-backed short-term goal. Needless to say, this has to have some bearing with your past to date.
This is also the part where you give a flowing account of your career to-date. It is critical to dwell on why MBA at this stage and why not something else.

Essay 2 (Optional)

Is there any other information you believe the Admissions Committee should know about you and your application to London Business School? (500 words)

Think if there’s any important message that’s not been conveyed in the rest of your application. It is best to understand what kind of applicant LBS is looking for and your personal positioning. And then focus on how you or your past can demonstrate those traits.

LBS MBA Tuition

The total tuition for LBS MBA turns out to be just north of $125,000.

Fee financing and scholarship options are available for the financially strung up candidates.

LBS MBA Application Deadlines

You can apply in one of four Rounds to be admitted to the MBA program. The table below summarizes the approximate period in which the annual rounds happen.

 

Round Application Deadline Interview decision Interview period Admission decision
1 Early-September 2nd week of October Mid October to early November Early December
2 Early January Early February Mid February to early March Early April
3 End of March End of April End of April to Mid May Early June

 

LBS MBA Career Prospects

Quoted by Bain & Co Middle East Inc as “one of our core schools globally,” for recruitment, LBS is designed keeping current employment demands in mind.

Quite true to that sentiment, most LBS graduates (90% of nearly 530 students) get an offer within three months of graduation.

With a mean salary of $100,000 plus other bonus like compensation of about $50k, LBS grads are quite comfortably situated in life, post MBA.

A majority find positions in the UK, while the rest meander around various parts of the globe.

As for the choice of industry, most follow a Consulting path, and a major share goes into Finance and Technology.

The major employers include names like BCG, Bain & Co, McKinsey, Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and such high flyers.

What are your chances of getting into LBS?

Now that we have the stats and the facts down, let us discuss the more relevant and poignant question – What are your chances of getting into LBS?

But to respond to that, let us first understand what qualities LBS holds dear and what kind of students currently comprise their MBA cohort.

What does LBS look for?

As LBS puts it, its MBA is meant for high potential applicants with more than two years of work experience, looking to change their career, its course, or start their own business.

LBS classes are highly multicultural and they look for candidates who can add to its diversity. Here is a look at a typical LBS class profile.

Number of students 530
Nationalities represented 66
% UK students 11%
% European students 17%
% North American students 18%
% South American students 17%
% Asian (India, China) students 28%
% Women 36%
Average work experience 5.5 years

Range 2 to 15 years

Average age 24 to 37 years
Undergraduate GPA 3.4 to 3.6
GMAT 600 to 790

As for the industry experience, a large section of the incoming MBA students come from a Consulting or Finance background. The rest are sprinkled with pre-MBA work experience in IT, FMCG, Manufacturing, Law, Energy, Public Sector and even Military.

Learn more: What London Business School looks for in MBA applicants.

What is the acceptance rate for LBS MBA?

LBS hasn’t released any recent data for applications vs admit offers to their MBA program. However, past numbers derived from Poets & Quants suggest that LBS is slightly more generous with admission offers as compared to other B-Schools that also rank well.

For instance, Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT Sloan, and Berkeley Haas are notoriously competitive.

Their acceptance rates are close to 10%.

Whereas LBS usually admits around 20% of the applicants each year. That number is closer to Wharton and Chicago Booth.

What do these statistics mean?

It would be a mistake to assume that your admission chances will always be 20%.

What these stats essentially represent is the possibility that you may stand a chance of being the lucky 20 among every 100 applicants to get an admission offer if your basic profile meets the basic requirements of LBS.

Of course, you may have a somewhat better chance if you have certain excellent qualities to contribute to the cohort. It may even be lower if you don’t meet their basic standards.

What do you need to do to get into LBS?

Firstly, one of the main suitability criterion lies in the work experience, not necessarily of the management kind, that you bring to the LBS MBA classroom.

In fact, they even go as far as to mention that a lack of an undergraduate degree needn’t be a deterring factor, just as long as you have a solid work experience.

Since the class average is about 5 years, LBS particularly mentions the need for every candidate to assess their MBA readiness.

If you have less than 2 years of work experience, LBS recommends specialized Master’s programs.

However, if you have faith in your academic credentials and other demonstrative evidence of leadership skills, you can still apply, even with less than 2 years of work experience.

For applicants with greater than 10 years, the LBS Executive MBA program is a strong alternative.

Secondly, they admit students with a minimum of 600 GMAT score.

However, even with an average of over 700, they strongly suggest you to consider your whole application package.

A strong GMAT score doesn’t guarantee admission if the rest of your application has no steam. In fact, they may even contact you to retake the GMAT if everything else fits their wholesome demands.

Thirdly, with the word “global” proudly displayed on their MBA page, they are quite serious about the diversity of their classes.

They encourage internationals to apply and tend to accommodate 90% of them with the rest 10% from UK.

Their classes have also had athletes, ex-military, theatre artists, doctors, lawyers, on top of the usual techies and commerce fellows.

So, focus on the flavor of diversity that you can contribute to them. Perhaps you might just get a call!

At MBA Crystal Ball, our admission consultants have helped many applicants get into LBS and many other top business schools. If you need professional help with your applications, drop us an email: info [at] mbacrystalball [dot] com