UCL, KCL, LSE- which has the most international students?

Walking through UCL, the majority seemed to be students from Asia. Is this accurate? How do KCL and LSE compare to this?

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

I think LSE is pretty renowned for having a lot of international students although I don't know what the data on this looks like.

At UCL I think from the last stats I saw it's a bit more than half of undergraduate students are home fees students. Bear in mind not all students at UCL are undergraduate students, and a lot of international students come to the UK for graduate study - particularly masters study where they may be getting scholarships from their governments etc. There are more international students on taught postgraduate programmes than UK domiciled students (although this inverts at the research level where there are fewer international students than UK domiciled students, although the PGR students are a much smaller cohort).

Note that UCL has published this information (latest data from 2022/23 year - as I understand international student enrolments have been slumping UK wide in the years since COVID so it may well be lower now) and it's available online: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/annual-review/facts-figures-and-statistics

The distribution of international students may also vary on a departmental level - when I took an archaeology module as an elective last year most of the students were British, albeit from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. I would also on that note caution against making assumptions based on appearances of students. There are plenty of British Asian students at UCL who are UK domiciled/home fees students; London unis in general seem to have more diverse cohorts in this regard, I suspect because many students at UCL are local to London and London itself is a relatively diverse city.