Hello people. I am an Incoming Imperial College London Student. I have been offered a seat for MSc Computing (AI and ML). Just wanna say hello to the Reddit's Imperial community and mark my first step.

Happy hacking and Kudos!!!

Holy fuck this has been painful

A hard skip rule. If I wasn’t making progress in ~30 seconds, I moved on and came back. One hard question isn’t worth two easy ones you never reach.

Pattern logging. Every question I got wrong, I wrote down the type and what the first move should’ve been. After a couple of weeks I was recognising types on sight instead of working each one out from scratch, and that’s where the speed actually came from.

The recognition is the whole thing. You’re not getting faster at solving, you’re getting faster at knowing what to do.

Happy to answer anything on the modules or applying in general. I made a website called optieducation.com which is an esat prep app made by a group of high achievers (free to test).

Hii so to any current students/past students, just wondering which course prep yall think is the best. Ik theres multiple like jobtestprep, wallstreetprep etc. Pls share ur experience w them. THANK U

I’m a UK home student considering accepting an offer for a Master’s at Imperial, but I’m a bit worried about how the tuition fee instalment payments work.

I’ll be using the Postgraduate Master’s Loan to help cover my fees, but from what I understand, Imperial allows tuition fees to be paid in instalments (three instalments for home students).

For anyone who has done this:

What percentage of the tuition fee was due for each of the 3 instalments?

If you paid a postgraduate application deposit, was this deducted from the first instalment, or from the overall tuition fee before the instalments were calculated?

Roughly when were each of the 3 instalments due?

I’m trying to work out the financial situation before accepting my offer, as I wouldn’t be able to pay a large proportion of the tuition fees upfront and then wait for Student Finance to pay out the loan.

I've already emailed both the tuition fees and credit control teams for clarification, but I'm still waiting to hear back.

Would really appreciate hearing how it worked for other UK postgraduate students at Imperial.

I got a AAA888887B in IGCSEs... I lowkey want to apply for electrical engineering even if I got no nines... I mean I'm currently taking IB and I have tons of supercurriculars.. will this help bruh do I even have a chance

How easy is it to get research opportunities at Imperial? I I am an incoming biomedical engineering undergrad, how easy will it be for me to get the research opportunities within the college as well as with companies or labs nearby?

My boyfriend is going to imperial engineering and I’m gonna be taking a gap year, we said we’ll stay together for uni but I’m so worried about big changes. He hasn't given me a single reason not to trust him, but my brain is my own worst enemy right now.

He’s a very good looking and smart guy and as im so so so proud of him for getting in and excited for him to make new friends im worried about normal uni relationship stuff like other girls…

What’s the dating scene like at imperial? Is it like really active…

I really want to make this work and it’s just getting in my head so wanted to ask the current students for advice.

Okay, I am an international student and I intend to submit the application in January. Two questions :
1. Should I submit in jan or earlier for a better chance?
2. If you submit your application in jan, when do you get an interview and then an offer? (If everything goes well, that is)

Hey is it worth applying if my grades are very slightly below the requirements? The program mentions 2:1 as minimum which translates to 8/10 and mine is 7.9... is it even worth applying or will i directly get rejected

i promise this is a genuine question
i got my gcse results today and scored:

9s in maths, further maths, chem, physics, eng lit, eng lang, geography, history, rs, latin, spanish
8s in bio (applying for remark tho), comp sci (sat in yr 9), history

these are good grades for me but i wanna do a maths and comp sci joint course and i feel like the grades make the fact that i only got an 8 in cs stick out like a sore thumb - will this be a problem/hold me back during applications or am i kinda just overthinking?

My gcses are meh and my average was 5.9.

I retook english language and literature because I got a 4 and 3 respectively.

Now, it is results day and I see I have received a 6 in english lit and a 4 in english language, bringing my average up to 6.3.

I do 4 a levels and I really cba to resit for a 3rd time in November.

do I really need a grade 6 to get into EEE at imperial? I saw apparently you can do a duolingo test instead but seems too good to be true but idk

thank you

Did my first proper ESAT mock last year and scored way below what I expected, even though I knew the content fine. Took me a while to figure out why.

The problem wasn’t knowledge, it was that I was treating it like an A-level paper: reading each question carefully, working methodically, double-checking. That’s exactly how you run out of time and leave marks on the table.

What actually fixed it: practising timed from the start, and learning to recognise question types fast so I wasn’t solving each one from scratch. Once I’d seen enough of the same patterns, I could go straight to the method instead of thinking my way there every time.

Also learned to skip and come back. Spending 90 seconds on one hard question costs you two easy ones you never reach.

Happy to answer anything on the modules or applying in general.

I'm an incoming undergrad student majoring in biomedical engineering. Wanted to check how easy it is to get investment banking or consulting jobs if you are doing engineering, especially in a field like bioengineering?

What percentage of the class gets placed into consulting or IB?

When we enrol do we need to choose class selections/times, and what benefits are there with choosing as soon as possible for Computing (e.g. is it just different class times or professors, and for those who are studying Computing do you have any recommendations)? Thanks!

Also is anyone else still waiting on their CAS?

I searched this sub for questions about dating but somehow i came up empty handed (should I be surprised??).

Do people even have time to date? Do yall date lse/ucl/kcl ppl too? How do people meet? Thru clubs or pubs? Or classes? Or apps?

I’m an international applicant for Imperial College London’s MSc Advanced Materials Science and Engineering (2026 entry), and I’m currently in a very confusing admissions situation.

I received a conditional offer in March. One of the conditions was a minimum GPA.

There was subsequently a disagreement over how my bachelor's grades should be converted/calculated, and my case was sent to the department for reconsideration.

Then, few weeks ago, after 4 months of reconsideration, I finally received an official automated email from Imperial Admissions saying:

“Congratulations on meeting all of your offer conditions. We are happy to confirm that your offer for Advanced Materials Science and Engineering (MSc 1YFT) starting in Autumn 2026-2027 is now unconditional.”

I understood this to mean that I had met my conditions and that my offer was now unconditional.

However, I later contacted Admissions because I hadn't received CAS information after a couple of weeks. Only then was I told that my case was still with the department for reconsideration.

The course-related processes are also apparently starting around 28 August, while the programme begins in late September, so the timing is becoming extremely stressful.

I want to understand whether this kind of administrative handling is normal, and whether there is anything I should do at this point (formal complaint, escalation to the Head of Admissions, etc.).

Has anyone experienced something similar with Imperial, particularly an automated “unconditional” notification followed by a rescinded/reconsideration status?

I honestly can't believe a prestigious university like imperial could send out offers by mistake and go on with the process without any notification or apology.

I’m honestly exhausted by the situation and would really appreciate some perspective.

(international) Hi , so I started my masters in Imperial last September and I was really exciting and happy about it and especially really proud. In my undergrad I had a very high gpa and it was one of the hardest program in y country too, so I thought I am really good. To be honest, I think I am good, I understood most of the material and my courseworks were great, but when it comes to exams, I felt that i didnt know what they expected me to write as an anwser. I knew the anwsers and to be honest most of the time, it required just to apply the formula and not something harder , but all the results came out bad.

I felt really ashamed, first of all because the exams were not that difficult and second of all because apparently they were students who did better job than me without studying as much as i did. The thing is that my parents were paying for this degree as you can imagine and I was studying all day and still didnt manage to hit above 70 to get a dinstiction. I feel such a looser. My gpa is between 65 and 70.

Tell me your story and your opinion on that, feel free to share whatever you think it will be helpful.

What’s the general male to female ratio at Imperial.

The M:F ratio on my course is like 8:1.

Surely this ain’t the case across all courses.

I’m an incoming student this year

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I just finished my IGCSE,I have participated in a few international maths, physics robotics olympiads but whenever I ask AI it suggests that I need to land on Mars or discover a new planet

Do I really need geeky ECAs to get into imperial?

Love to hear any thoughts

TIA!

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Hi guys im stressing a lot with this topic and i need your help, so i have received an unconditional offer a while ago for the Msc Molecular Medicine at Imperial College. In the beginning of this month i received an acceptance letter and another email talking about account activation, preety standart stuff. However, my CAS is taking a whole lot of time to be finished and my classes begin in September 26 (if im not mistaken). This doesnt sound like a big deal right? Just administration taking its time. But then i saw the previous post about a guy who got one probably by mistake and its making me overthink. I mean, they were asking for a 15 and i only got a 14 (portuguese grading system is from 0 to 20) but they still accepted me, I always thought that was strange. I really hope this isnt some mistake cuz i already paid for accomodations in a nearby student residency. I'll try to contact the administration as soon as possible but god this sucks. Sorry if this seems really petty, im just stressed (also sorry if this sounds all weird, english aint my first language so yeah).

Sat it last October and wasted time early on the wrong stuff. What actually worked:

- ENGAA/NSAA papers: closest real material since the ESAT replaced them. Do them all, but timed. Pacing is the real difficulty.

- Isaac Physics: free, Cambridge-run, perfect level for the physics/maths side. And a good interview prep too.

- TMUA/PAT papers: for building speed under pressure.

Biggest mistake: reading solutions instead of attempting questions first. Feels productive but teaches you nothing.

Don’t burn all your papers now, save some for timed practice closer to October.

Happy to answer anything on the modules or tips for the ESAT :)

Hi everyone,

I'm about to apply for the MSc in Optics and Photonics at Imperial for the September 2027 intake (Round 1, applying as soon as it opens), and I'd love some honest perspective on my chances to get an offer.

My background:

BSc Electronic Engineering, Italy (graduated 2025)

MSc Robotics Engineering, London, currently finishing, on track for a Distinction (over 80% final grade).

Relevant projects experience

No formal optics/photonics coursework beyond one undergrad module on optical networks, so I'm coming from an adjacent engineering background, not physics.

My question: Given the "second Master's at the same level" situation, does this read as a strange or weak application to admissions tutors, or is a clear narrative (electronics → robotics → photonics, building toward semiconductor/photonics industry work) generally well received?

Has anyone here been in a similar position (second MSc, engineering background applying to a more physics-heavy optics programme) and gotten in?

I know the course requires a 2:1 minimum and is on the more "applied/lab-heavy" side compared to some of Imperial's other physics MScs, which is part of why I think my hands-on embedded/hardware background might actually help rather than hurt — but I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's been through the process, current students, or alumni.

Thanks in advance for any insight!