LSE is based in Westminster, central London, on the boundary between Covent Garden and Holborn. It has around 8,700 full-time students and 1,300 academic staff[5] and had a total income of £220.9 million in 2009/10, of which £23.9 million was from research grants and contracts.[6] LSE's library, the British Library of Political and Economic Science, contains over 4.7 million volumes and is the world's largest social and political sciences library. LSE was found to have the highest percentage of world-leading research of any British university in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.[7]
LSE is among the world's most selective universities and in 2008 had the lowest undergraduate admissions rate of any university in Britain.[8][9] It has a highly international student body,[10] and at one time had more countries represented by students than the UN has members.[11] LSE has produced many notable alumni in the fields of law, economics, business, literature and politics. There are currently 16 Nobel Prize winners[12] amongst LSE's alumni and current and former staff, as well as 34 world leaders and numerous Pulitzer Prize winners and fellows of the British Academy.[13]
LSE is a member of the Association of