One of the oldest and largest colleges of the University of London, KCL has more than 30,000 students — a third of them from outside the UK. Four of its five campuses are within a square mile of each other near the banks of the Thames near London Bridge and Waterloo, where students mingle with tourists in the capital’s heartland. The fifth is in Denmark Hill, in south London, the base for the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and dentistry teaching facilities.

The Strand site and the Waterloo campus house most of the university’s non-medical departments.  Facilities for film studies have been enhanced by the addition of new industry-standard equipment. The Dickson Poon School of Law has expanded into the East Wing of the striking London landmark Somerset House. Bush House, the former headquarters of the BBC World Service and another historic London building, is the latest acquisition, housing KCL’s business school, the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy and some student services.

Nursing and midwifery and some biomedical subjects are based at Waterloo, while medicine and dentistry are mainly at Guy’s Hospital, near London Bridge, and the St Thomas’ Hospital campus, across the river from the Houses of Parliament. A £3 million upgrade to dentistry facilities at Guy’s has added 70 “phantom head” simulators for practising dental surgery and and 12 haptics technology units using virtual reality. 

More than 300 employers visit KCL each year to recruit students — including JP Morgan, Meta, Clifford Chance and PwC. King’s graduates do well in the jobs market — resulting in 11th place in our analysis of the latest Graduate Outcomes survey, which tracks the proportion of graduates in professional-level jobs or undertaking further study 15 months after leaving university. Undergraduates can attend breakfast drop-in sessions with employers as well as taking up opportunities for work shadowing and industry placements.   

KCL’s links with employers contributed to a silver rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework. The panel highlighted the “excellent” extent to which students were stretched academically and the “strong research-led culture” that requires all research staff to teach.

Fourteen KCL staff and alumni have been awarded the Nobel prize. The university continues its research-intensive tradition, climbing one place to eighth in our research quality index this year after 55.1 per cent of the work submitted to the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) was judged to be world-leading — the top category. KCL’s best results were in allied health subjects, business and management, classics, clinical medicine, sport and exercise sciences, chemistry, modern languages, engineering and theology.

The university does less well on rates of student satisfaction — in common with many London and research-led institutions. KCL has fallen to the bottom ten for how students rate teaching quality and their wider experience in the latest National Student Survey, published in summer 2022 — contributing to its disappearance from the top 20 in our main academic league table. 

A dual award master’s degree leading to registration as an adult nurse and mental health nurse has been added to the curriculum for 2022-23. Medical students are now able to pursue a chosen field in greater depth during an intercalated BSc (iBSc). A one-year cardiovascular medicine iBSc is welcoming its first cohort of students, taught by one of only six British Heart Foundation Centres of Excellence in the UK. From 2023 KCL will offer degrees in classics and the ancient world, and liberal arts (with international development). 

KCL is more successful in our social inclusion index (80th) than most other Russell Group universities, behind only Queen Mary, University of London and Sheffield. Two-thirds of students are from ethnic minorities and the university’s narrow black achievement gap is the sixth-best. Course completion rates have improved to 28th: KCL’s dropout rate is lower than expected in light of the course profile and the background of the student intake.

Contextual admissions are made to students enrolled on KCL’s schemes to widen participation and who meet other criteria. About 30 per cent of entrants in 2021 qualified for KCL’s wide range of bursaries and scholarships and the university expects to continue a similar level of financial assistance. 

KCL’s sports grounds are a train ride away in south London. There are facilities for all the main sports, plus rifle ranges, two gyms and a swimming pool.

Accommodation is guaranteed to all first-years who apply by the late May deadline. More than 1,100 rooms are at the lowest end of the rent scale (£155-£169 a week). Only 11 rooms are available at the maximum price of £465 a week. Halls are spread out across the capital but each has its own community and events.