Yes, University College London (UCL) is a hard university to get into. As a rule of thumb, degrees at UCL are very competitive.
Admission to the majority of King's courses is highly competitive, and this means that unfortunately a large number of applicants - even those who meet or exceed the minimum entry requirements for consideration - will be unsuccessful each year.
For postgraduate taught courses: King's aims to make decisions on applications within 10 weeks though some of our very competitive postgraduate taught courses operate a 'gathered field' process for applicants who meet the advertised entry requirements and may therefore take longer.
Firstly, it's tough to get in. Like many Russell Group universities, KCL has high entry requirements and competition can be strong, especially for popular courses like Law and Medicine. You need to be hitting top grades—As, As and Bs—and have a strong interest in your subject outside of school to have a chance.
KCL has ranked #7 for British universities in the QS rankings since 2019. Imperial College London has stayed at #3, University College London (UCL) at #4 and the London School of Economics (LSE) at #8. At first glance, this suggests remarkable consistency among the top London universities.
As reported in the latest UCAS admissions data, UCL has an offer rate of 29.5%. They also have an applications/accepted ratio of 10.08 (meaning that for every 10 applications, they'll accept one student). KCL has a higher offer rate of 39.3% and an applications/accepted ratio of 9.6.
With respect to Economics - this is one of KCL's newer programmes so it may be that it needs time to establish itself in this space. Alternatively it may not have captured sufficient data for the domestic rankings which is distorting the scores.
In your supporting statement, explain why you are interested in the job and present your skills, knowledge, and experience in a clear structure. Provide evidence. Showcase your competency by describing what you did, how you did it, why you did it, and the impact it had. Essential and desirable criteria.
Your personal statement is a piece of writing - about 4,000 characters or 47 lines of text - which you will include in your application.