Imperial - recent experiences?

[clappamjunxion]

My son has 5 engineering offers which are all great for different reasons. He knows which will be his reserve choice (and would be very happy with it) but needs to decide which of the other 4 to firm - they are Imperial, Bristol, Bath and UCL. We live in London so finances are not part of the decision - he is mainly choosing based on the course and the experience.

Imperial needs two A-stars, so is a higher risk than the other 3, which need one.

He knows Imperial has the best league table position, but the others aren't far behind for his engineering discipline.

One concern he has about Imperial is the teaching staff - he has spent the last two years with one subject teacher who speaks very broken English, and has found that difficult. When he visited Imperial, two of the talks were given by lecturers whose English was very difficult to follow. The admissions tutors emphasised what an international course it was. Our older son is at another London uni and has found similar with one or two of his lecturers. Is this a common issue experienced at all universities or is it likely to be more of an issue at Imperial?

Major universities are very international.

What engineering discipline is this? DS had friends who did engineering imperial and they loved it.

If your DS wants a less globalised university experience a non-London university (Bristol or Bath) is more likely to meet that. But it's still worth researching the percentage of international students on his intended course and their provenance.

This is true. Many Schools will list currently taught modules, including the names of lecturers, on their public web pages. Whilst it is quite possible that people with minimal or no accents have ethnic names, the reverse is seldom true. Also, one can often find the lecturers’ CVs on their home pages and these may show where they were educated.

There is a fine line between a genuine difficulty with accents, which is a real issue, and bias - implicit or conscious. The former gets easier over time but may always be more difficult for some than others. (I have been in the UK for over a decade and still have trouble with heavy northern accents. I think northerners are amongst the nicest, if I may generalise, so I don’t think it is bias)

All the Schools or Faculties of Engineering you have listed recruit internationally, so accents may be an issue. Imperial is famous for having perhaps the most international student cohort in the UK, around 60%, with an emphasis on Chinese students. We expect that with Trump’s recent moves the UK, Canada and Australasia may be getting more applications from Chinese students soon, although the UK visa situation means proportionately more may favour the last two destinations.

If I were your DS and accents were a genuine problem I would compare Imperial staff to the staff at the other universities before making a decision. I appreciate that grades are also a factor, however. Best wishes to DS

Yes, we know. However, I think most parents who have been to university themselves will remember lecturers who were all-round brilliant and lecturers who were brilliant at research but not at lecturing/tutoring. There can be a variety of reasons, but English language skills can obviously be a factor, especially when explaining something complex. I was with my son at the Imperial open day - one talk in particular was extremely hard to understand. We didn't experience that at the other open days. I'm aware that Imperial's international reputation is largely based on its research outputs rather than its teaching, so I'm hoping for some feedback on the teaching from recent students/parents.

My son has developed independent learning skills at school, through necessity, but it has also made him appreciate the benefits of good teaching.

PS FS could join the online forum The Student Room and ask students in the relevant degree programmes about this directly. In order to generate useful responses and make sure no one sees the question as racist, he needs to be careful with his wording (to own up to not being great with accents)

Edit: DS not FS

To be clear, my question was not to do with the students. Having international students is a benefit. Having international lecturers is a definite benefit too, so long as they are good at communicating with their students.

I don't agree that having too high a proportion of international students is a benefit. Our DC and one of my nephews, on STEM courses at Cambridge and Imperial, have found it quite lonely in seminars where Chinese is the working language between tutor and students.

Imperial all day, surely? Engineering now is a multi national discipline, so there will be overseas lecturers at most UK universities in engineering. If he pursues a career in engineering many of his colleagues , suppliers and customers at all levels will non native English speakers with strong accents, so he'll need to acclimatise to this.

There is highly likely to be the same variability of English language among engineering lectureres in all UK universities because of international staff recruitment. One of my DC did engineering at Glasgow and encountered this in lectures.

Someone has pointed me to the national student survey data which asks some relevant questions about teaching, so we'll spend some time looking at that.

Imperial Engineering is generally well regarded for teaching, OP. Your DS has a very specific concern.

Perhaps you just have a very specific interpretation of his concern. 🙂

It's pretty normal for students to look for differentiators when weighing up pros and cons between courses, one of which is potential teaching quality. My son has grown up in London, so is very used to people with accents, including teachers. Accents are not a problem, and broken English is not a problem in most scenarios, but broken English in a teaching scenario can be a problem if it undermines the teaching.

The results of question T01 in the student survey are helpful. I expect my son will also be gathering info from elsewhere.

Imperial has fantastic industry connections and placements. No matter where he goes he will find professors with an accent, that’s just life. In reality most of his learning will be self-guided anyway so it won’t make a hill of beans difference. His placements and industry experience absolutely will.

I was going to say the same as well.

I don't think OP was talking about accent tho, and nor was I.

I think you should email the engineering department directly and ask them what they think.

What type of engineering is it? For opportunities career wise, imperial wins out every day

The oddest response I have ever received on the FE board.

Surely you know that every one of us is a walking mass of implicit bias? It is only reasonable gently to query - not accuse - whether this is part of an unknown YP’s thinking. Enough of my own personal tutees have confessed over time to troubles with East Asian accents that have turned out to be a bit complex that it was worth a gentle probe. I don’t think my own tutees have taken the discussions amiss and I have evidence for that. (My own accent is slight, and western). But a conversation lacks the ambiguity of a short MN reply.

Having been an admissions tutor in my own (highly ranked) STEM school I am most surprised that Imperial would put not one but two lecturers with real communications issues in front of largely British students they are trying to entice. So I think your DS - like me, as I made clear - perhaps doesn’t find accents so easy.

Of course context is everything. I can talk STEM with someone who has the thickest of Yorkshire accents, whereas if they are telling me the daily special it can be a problem. For most people the situation would be reversed.

I hear you, OP, but Imperial is just too good an opportunity not to firm. I think it would be insane not to firm it. Also I don't think you can predict who his lecturers are going to be over the next three years, or what their standard of English is going to be. It also needs to be a case of his adapting to understand the person who is speaking - which is going to be the case at University and in any career.

Those two lecturers may only deliver a small part of the engineering degree or certain modules. I’ve never heard of this as an issue about the lecturers but it is undoubtedly a more international university than Bristol for example. Every dc we know at IC is having a great time and it has an excellent reputation . Sounds like he might fit in better elsewhere though if this is a concern.

I appreciate your DC found tutors with strong accents at times hard to follow to date, but I’d just say that if you become immersed in accents, as I did when I worked on the trading floor of an investment bank, you develop an ear and tuning in becomes easier over time. It’s a cognitive skill that develops with exposure and practice and is eminently useful when you get into the world of work (and I’ve noticed I’ve lost it a bit since I left to become a SAHM, as I now sometimes struggle to understand people on the phone with heavy accents).

Chances are he will make friends in the student body with equally rich and diverse accents and it will soon become second nature outside of the teaching environment. It’s worth considering recording seminars so that he can play back the ones where he thinks he missed certain words or phrases and review his notes, but if Imperial is the best course for him on paper, I’d encourage him not to be put off on this basis only.

Is his insurance offer much lower? Imperial are highly unlikely to ancceot anything below their offer where there’s a very slight chance that one of the others will - I know it’s very slight though.

Even without financial considerations, Bath is a very different “experience” to London and Bristol between the two. Would your DS prefer to remain in London, potentially living at home, or have a more traditional campus life?

I’m afraid that teaching standards at all universities do seem to be very varied. My DS is doing engineering at Bath and has generally been happy with most lecturers but less so with some exams that don’t reflect the course content; my DD is in Durham and has had several international lecturers who she has struggled to understand and some UK staff who have no idea how to teach. A friend was showing me some of her DS’s engineering lectures at a less prestigious institution and nobody could understand what they were saying.