This is going to be a series of articles going in detail about what happened during my Imperial College London Interview. Throughout these blogs I will share with you the experience I gained along the way.
So, you might be asking, “why should I just trust some random internet stranger on tips for interviews at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.”
Well, firstly I have been accepted to study at the University, so obviously I have passed my interview. And secondly, I have been awarded the president’s scholarship (only awarded to a maximum of 112 applicants each year), which means that I did *pretty good* in my interview (i.e. I basically had a perfect interview). So I have the “interview theory” and have succeeded putting it to the test.
Interviews are a vital part of the UK university application process. Many candidates with outstanding A level results and pre-interview assessment results have been consequently rejected by a prestigious university
I applied for the 2020/2021 cohort. I sent my application at the beginning of October and received my offer at the beginning of December. Since COVID-19 just started, all the interviews were either online or cancelled. I applied to the department of electrical and electronics engineering to study Meng Electrical and Electronics Engineering with Management. My department at the time still had online interviews with a real interviewer. (However, some natural sciences departments had no interviews and civil engineering had an “interview” where they recorded you answering some questions).
The interview was schedule to be around 25-30 minutes and I was assigned a teaching fellow in my department. For the first 5 minutes, he started off by asking me things from my personal statement, including asking me to explain what the competitions I included were, and asked me why I chose engineering, why my major, and why Imperial college London.
After this, we moved onto technical questions.I had two interview questions, one was a graphing one (read my other blog on specific problems and solutions), another one was a mechanics trick question (difficulty comparable to Further Maths mechanics). I finished both of the questions correctly in about 5 minutes. So for the rest of the time, the lecturer invited me to ask him questions about studying in UK/questions about Imperial and we had a pretty good time. In the end, he asked me “if I had any other questions”. When I replied that all my questions have been answered, he told me that “I know you did not ask this question, but just letting you know that if your application was successful, you should hear back from the department in about 2-3 weeks.” At the time I did not think too much of it, but looking back at the situation, the phrasing, how quickly I received my offer (in December), and being awarded a scholarship, that seemed like a sign from the interviewer that I did really well. So thats my story.
Before I begin with the tips though, I do want you to take what I am going to say with a grain of salt. This is because every department have slightly different interviews and different requirements. Even among the same department, each interviewer will probably have different questions. . However, some of the general tips will definitely be useful if you are fortunate to get an interview from Imperial College London. And I hope you find my story interesting.
With that out of the way, let’s now move on.