What may be interesting is how French (and others) perceive British courses. Experience suggests that English parents attach more prestige to where a DC studies, whereas international parents, especially those working in the financial sector, seem to be more orientated towards quasi-vocational degrees and give a relatively higher qudos to studying at the LSE or Imperial.
Obviously when a DC is deciding where to apply to a whole lot of other things go into the mix. British DC wanting to study something like economics, maths or engineering are lucky that they have a range of world ranked institutions to choose from, and with Warwick, London and Oxbridge in the mix, a varied range of University experiences on offer.
I suspect French applicants may not fully understand that competitive Universtities are looking for potential rather than simply achieved grades. Contextualisation is part of the process for British applicants, and though I don't know how they do it, I assume may be for French. Certainly if a French applicant has been to a "bog-standard" school in the provinces and has got the grades partly under their own steam it should do not harm to mention it. Universities are also aware that predictions can be of variable accurancy. DS was at a well known school who were careful not to devalue their credibility, but you read elsewhere on MN of schools routinely over-predicting. It seems that French schools may do the same.
French students may also not understand that for competitive courses the standard offer may be some way below what is effectively required, especially for students who are not educationally disadvantaged. The easiest way to identify those courses is to look on the www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?o=Entry+Standards&s=economics and consider whether predicted UCAS points match those of average sucessful applicants. Applications with actual rather than predicted grades are often easier.
Go Milou - the LSE has always been very international, and also had a very high proportion of Post-graduate students. Back in the dark ages, when I took my degree I was the only British student taking my specialist option. The demographics have changed. We had a lot of Iranians and Greeks, now there are more East Asians and EU citizens, but there is still a huge mix. The mix of British students has also changed. More ethnic minorities, more privately educated, more from within the M25. Some of this will reflect changes in London, not least property prices and perhaps a perception that London is large busy and overwhelming, and changes to the financing of higher education.
That said there are big variations in competition between courses. In 2014 for economics the ratio of applicants to places was 11.8 to 1. (I suspect the strong pound will have impacted on Asian applications, but also note that admissions advice has changed to suggest that History A level, specifically, is seen as desirable.)
www.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/DegreeProgrammes2016/economics/L101_BSc_Econ.aspx
Law, which again is a course highly regarded by employers, had a ratio of 14.3 applicants to places. In contrast the ratio for maths with economics was 6.8 and entry requirements for subjects like geography are lower.