Imperial College

Jessica_UK

Imperial College London 4th September 2008

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I am currently a student of Mathematics. Last year, 2007, Imperial College was ranked as the 5th best university in the world. I have often heard people say that if student satisfaction were higher, then Imperial would overtake OxBridge in the league tables. I have to agree, student satisfaction is generally pretty low here. When I applied to Imperial, I got my offer after a good part of my A2 year had already past, and the correspondence was absolutely appalling. I received, since applying to Imperial, till I started, about 1 letter and 3 emails. The letter was actually my offer letter! This might be due to Imperial being my insurance choice and not the university I could have gone to, but even so I think it was a very poor effort on their behalf. The Maths department aren't particularly nice to their students when it comes to exams, since we had 8 exams in a row with no breaks apart from the weekend (which I spent sleeping), whilst almost every other department that year had both less exams and exams split over a decent time period. There is always work to do, and pressure from being able to study alongside the brightest students from pretty much every country, as well as having lecturers who are both renown and extremely intelligent, but at Imperial, and London for that matter, it has been a great opportunity to meet a lot of people. Imperial offers a lot of clubs and societies, some of them aren't great at all, but again provide many opportunities to meet people and learn new skills. I must add, Imperial is a university specialising in science and technology, so you can't get degrees in humanity subjects, but having said that, there are opportunities still to learn new languages. For example, many courses (not Maths...), allow students to take language courses that add some course credit to their degree for that year. (In Maths, for those that are interested, you can take humanities courses in second year, but they don't count towards anything, plus you have to do and hand in all the coursework etc). One thing I really didn't like about my department particularly, was the fact that some lecturers didn't seem to want to lecture or teach us, which is fair enough, since they come to Imperial primarily to research, but it just meant that lectures were noisy, and students lost enthusiasm completely. Apart from languages, Imperial also has the Blyth Music Centre which is the home to a dozen or so pianos that anyone can come in and play on. If you are an Imperial student, you can also gain free access to the gym and swimming pool at the Ethos sports centre, which has state of the art facilities. The location to Imperial is great. Imperial is in South Kensington, one of the best parts of London, and is also next to Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall. Prices at Imperial aren't very good at all, and I have been told that buying a sandwich from Harrods is cheaper than buying a sandwich from our Junior Common Room. The male:female ratio is also notorious. It is probably about 6:4 or even 7:3. Having said all of that, Imperial college still is one of the best places in the world to study and as they hold careers fairs and invite speakers to talk in societies, it is also a great opportunity to find internships for the summer. A lot of students from Maths go into banking and getting a degree from Imperial is definitely a plus. It is a lot of hard work, and prices in London are also notoriously high with some students paying over £150 a week for rent not including any bills either. I feel though, that apart from meeting people (and having a life generally), the main purpose of coming to Imperial is to get a good degree in order to get employment afterwards, as is the view of many people at Imperial. Overall, I'd recommend Imperial, it offers world class scientists and an environment where everyone wants to succeed.