LSE Graduation Guide

LSE holds two rounds of ceremonies a year, and which one is yours depends on how long your programme ran. Summer is for undergraduates and for master's programmes of nine or ten months. Winter is for twelve-month taught master's. MPhil and PhD graduates can be presented in either. Each round follows the same sequence; the current dates are on LSE's Upcoming ceremonies page.

Your ceremony at LSE follows your department. Most departments graduate together, but a few are split by programme across two ceremonies, Government, International Development and Management among them, so for those it's your programme that counts. Type either one below to see your ceremony, its date and its start time, then add it to your calendar.

The booking form in your invitation does three jobs at once: it reserves your own seat, it asks for your guest tickets, and it tells the ceremonies team what you need on the day. Send it whether or not your marks are in. If it later turns out you haven't completed your degree, LSE cancels the booking for you, and you can graduate at a later ceremony once you have.

Submitting the form sends an automated email straight back, listing what you asked for. Read it through, and check your junk folder if it hasn't arrived. The confirmation of your ceremony slot follows once the deadline has passed.

Every graduand can ask for two guest tickets, free, like your own. Extra tickets are unlikely; when there are any, they are allocated by email before the ceremonies, and none are handed out on the day. Children over two need a ticket and a seat of their own, and younger ones sit on a carer's knee. Children sit with an adult guest, never next to the graduand.

Nobody needs a ticket to watch, though. Each ceremony is screened live on campus, in the Old Theatre in the Old Building and in the Weston Cafe on the sixth floor of Saw Swee Hock, and broadcast online for anyone watching from home. Guests without tickets can still spend the day on campus with you, though the ceremony and the reception afterwards are ticket-only.

Everything happens within a few minutes' walk of Houghton Street. Leave plenty of time: there is no way into the theatre once your ceremony has started, and LSE has nowhere on campus to store luggage, so travel light. The Peacock Theatre's cloakroom takes small items and prams while you're inside.

LSE's pages put the ceremony at between an hour and an hour and a half. Your degree certificate isn't part of it: taught graduates collect theirs separately during graduation week.

You need academic dress to take part. LSE recommends buying or hiring it from its official supplier, Ede & Ravenscroft, but that is a recommendation, not a requirement, so it pays to know what LSE's dress looks like. Graduates have worn LSE's own gowns since it began awarding degrees in its own name, and they carry its academic colours: purple, black and gold. Bachelor's and master's graduates wear a black gown with a hood in purple and gold, and doctors wear a purple gown.

Under it, LSE asks for business attire, smart national dress or other formal clothing. A shirt or blouse with buttons keeps the hood where it should be, and a few safety pins or hair pins help too.

Sizes go quickly as each round approaches, so book early.

A place at the ceremony depends on two things: a booking sent through your invitation, and a degree you have completed. The one people forget is money. If you owe LSE anything, it has to be cleared before your ceremony: with a debt outstanding you can't collect your tickets or take part.

Research students have one more hurdle: the award has to be made by LSE's cut-off for that round to be invited at all. Finalists sitting assessments in IRDAP or RDAP are invited to the next ceremony where their programme is presented.

You graduate whether or not you cross the stage. If the day itself is impossible, you can move to a later ceremony or let this one go.