Experiences of Imperial College

[Partridgewell]

Hi all,

DS had his heart set on Oxford, but it wasn't to be. He has offers from Imperial College and Warwick to study Maths. He slightly prefers Warwick in terms of location and lifestyle. However, he wants to be an academic, so Imperial would make sense from the point of view of it being a slightly more prestigious university.

His main concerns about Imperial are the location and the fact that there are no arts students. He is looking on The Student Room etc, but I said I would ask on here too. Any experiences? We know lots of people who have been to Warwick but very few who have been to Imperial.

Thanks in advance.

Putting a positive spin on it, I'm hoping it may be because civil engineers need to be more well rounded than some other types of engineer, and giving everyone the same interview opportunity might enable the admissions tutors to be less stringent on ESAT cut-offs - I doubt whether the maths/physics scores need to be as high for civil eng as for something like computational physics, or electronic engineering. (Local rival UCL doesn't even have maths/physics A levels as requirements).

When we went to the open day we had a talk/demo from a postdoc and we barely understood a word - not because it was complex, but because his English wasn't as clear as it needed to be for that scenario. They are very proud of their international intake, but I do wonder if verbal communication skills are part of the assessment.

Would have thought math and physics to be quite important for civil engineering. Not sure whether civil engineering having to be more rounded than other engineers.

My guess is that there are far too many applications and AI can help with lots of data; but I am not an expert.

What are the chances to get in in CE? for DE is 1 in 7; around 700 applications and around half get invited to interview and 100 places.

Good luck to your son

Ha ha! When I was at IC in the late seventies / early eighties there were all sorts of rumours about the tunnels under IC - that they led under Hyde Park, that the went as far as Whitehall, that there were nuclear bunkers etc......

Well according to Google AI it is 57% (!) for the MEng course my son applied to, though I didn't check the source, so it could be a hallucination.

He actually cooled on the idea of Imperial after the Open Day, and wrote it off more-or-less completely after the ESAT (he got below average), so didn't do much prep or have much enthusiasm for the video interview. I think he will be pleasantly surprised if he gets an offer, but may not accept it now. Those stats look encouraging, so let's see. He has his other 4 offers and currently seems very keen on Bristol.

Maths/physics is important for CE but, apart from some specialist areas, most civil engineers will never need more than A level mechanics, and that can be covered in their uni course.

DC's interview was with a real person online. This was for science.

Hmm thanks @pivotall and @Turmerictolly , good to know.

One reason I was thinking AI might be positive in an interview scenario is that an AI shouldn’t be biased on sex, race or class, can’t be tired, grumpy or irrational, can’t have a soft spot for a particular school or type of blue eyes and can’t take a random like or dislike to someone. (I say shouldn’t for obvious possible programming biases).

Of course it can’t also go off topic, follow up interesting points, be patient, put someone at their ease or otherwise express empathy like a human being, because it’s just blinding sifting information after the fact… I wonder if this will create a bias for kids who are comfortable filming themselves and speaking to camera and disadvantage the ones who run a mile at a camera or public speaking?

"I wonder if this will create a bias for kids who are comfortable filming themselves and speaking to camera and disadvantage the ones who run a mile at a camera or public speaking?"

Definitely!

AI will be biased on race, class and sex, because it's created by humans, unfortunately. My DD just had to do a bot interview for a grad scheme - it's horrible! Good luck to all of those waiting.