Applying to 5 courses at ucl

So at UCL admissions have two sides, the departmental side and the central side. Ultimately decisions are made by central admissions, although the department can provide context/information or advocate for a strong applicant. At least, this is how it was explained to me by my (then future) department.
What this means is that they will see you applied to 5 different courses at UCL, as at some point there will be a central admissions person looking at everything. I can't say for certain whether this would impact your chances of admission but realistically, in the UK there is a great emphasis on focus on the specific course being applied to, rather than applying "at large" to a university or having a more vague idea of the academic direction you're interested in.
Therefore I think it's at the least unlikely to be a positive effect and at best will be net neutral, and I think there is a reasonable chance it would reflect poorly.
I'd just suggest picking the singular course at UCL you are most interested in and applying to that one, and tailoring your PS and application around that. You don't have to use all your choices if you don't want to - I only applied to one course at UCL because I knew it was the only course available at UK universities that I wanted to do which I was able to (due to constraints on my with respect to study mode and commuting).

okayy thank you so much for your reply!!
do you think i should leave like 2 of my choices empty? or what should i do? is it appropriate if i email them about this? can i pm you abt this if its okay
edit: sorry for so many questions i'm just rlly lost about this 😭

okay i know this sounds weird maybe, but im an intl so it doesnt really matter to me how i'm 'using up the spaces', or how i only have one PS (the courses are similar anyway). UCL is competitive, so yea. honestly i really just wanna go to that one place, and ive tried researching, but i havent found my requirements met anywhere else in the UK. my question is, will the AOs find it suspicious or a kind of red flag?

As above if the courses have similar entry requirements then you're likely to be accepted to all of them (if you meet the requirements and are a competitive applicant) or none of them (if not) so applying to the extra courses does not "increase your chances" of getting into the uni in any event by giving you "extra tickets" to try your luck with.
Also you can only accept one firm choice option in UCAS, and some unis have policies of only making one offer per applicant anyway. So you may well just be made a single offer even if you meet the requirements for all the courses - and they may just ask you which you want the offer for if they would consider you for multiple, thereby necessitating you make the choice of which course to effectively have applied to in the first place.
You really need to just make a decision now about what you want to study and apply to that course. That removes any potential concerns you have and applying to one course vs give doesn't make you less likely to get an offer from the uni at all...

well, i asked the admissions and they said that i may receive more than one offer... so ig that's good news!

I mean it does answer that question although getting multiple offers from one uni doesn't really achieve much since at the end of the day you can only have one firm and one insurance choice. Sooner or later you need to make a decision on what course you intend to pursue...

i appreciate your comment. you're totally right i *will* have to choose sooner or later (i already do have a top choice among the courses), but yea since i don't rlly have any other uni to apply to, and i guess i feel like this way i'll probably get *atleast* 1 offer, honestly 1 offer is all i want and i'll be happy! my goal is not to amass offers lol

I think it used to be slightly cheaper to just apply to a single choice, although I think now it costs the same regardless. In any event, best of luck

It's the same charge regardless of how many UCAS choices you use.

Yeah, bit of a shame as sometimes someone might just have a single choice to apply to and getting a little discount was nice! I do recall you used to have to pay the difference if going through clearing anyway though so probably makes the pricing more transparent to have it the same across the board.

Yeah, it simplifies things from UCAS's POV. I imagine having to take all those partial payments for clearing or people adding more choices was a huge pain.