Don't do MSc Econ at LSE if you want a PhD

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Here is my experience as a current student in the MSc Economics programme at LSE.

The programme is great in terms of elevating your knowledge and economic skills and opened up many doors for my friends who are looking for jobs, but the degree has not helped in the least for applying to PhD programmes.

Administration will tell you a Master's degree from LSE will be enough to get into a Top 20 PhD programme, and one administrator here even told me I was applying to too many low-ranked schools that will "accept me for sure." Well, I applied to those schools anyway and was rejected. If I wasn't competitive for schools outside of the top 30, why did administration encourage me to apply to HPY and all the other top programmes?

You need to have strong LORs and research experience, neither of which you can obtain at LSE while pursuing your Master's. Your professors will not be able to write strong LORs before PhD deadlines, because you will have known them for six weeks. So, the department expects you to use two undergraduate recommendations + one from your LSE academic advisor (who probably doesn't even know your name and uses a generic letter using feedback from PhD students who teach your classes).

Apply for predocs or choose a different school if you truly want to get a PhD. My friends and I have been rejected from almost all our schools, and I wanted to share this very expensive lesson I learned (nearly $1,500 USD in application fees).