Guide

Imperial College London Acceptance Rates

Thu 12 Sep 2024 • 11 min read

Explore Imperial College London’s acceptance rates, admissions trends, and how they compare to other top universities. Learn why it’s competitive to get into this world-leading STEM institution and how to improve your chances.

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Contents

Why Choose Imperial?
Recent History
2019-2023 Acceptance Rates
Acceptance Rate by Subject
Postgraduate Acceptance Rates
Comparison to Other Universities
Why is the Rate so Low?
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Imperial College London Acceptance Rates

This guide explores what Imperial College London’s acceptance rates have looked like in recent years and for the last cycle, how these compare to similar world-leading universities in the UK and US, and why it’s so hard to get into Imperial. Bear in mind, though, that statistics don’t mean it’s impossible: around 3000 people do start at Imperial as undergraduates every year!

If you’re interested in applying to Imperial, you may like to take a look at our guides on how to get into Imperial College London and how hard it is to get into Imperial.

Read on to learn more and find out how Dukes can support you with your Imperial application.

Why Choose Imperial College London?

Located in South Kensington in central London, Imperial College London has an impressive reputation as a world-leading institution in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). Imperial is ranked 2^nd in the world by the QS world university rankings and 5th in the United Kingdom by the Guardian’s university rankings.

Alongside its scientific reputation, Imperial’s prestigious postgraduate Business School attracts keen entrepreneurs and allows undergraduate students to take modules in finance and business, as well as offering its first undergraduate degrees from 2025. With a strong culture of entrepreneurship, many Imperial students choose to found startups, alongside high proportions leveraging their research-focused degrees for careers in science. As well as business, the College’s Horizons programme means students can maintain degree-level study in the humanities in tandem with their scientific programmes.

The Recent History of Imperial College London Acceptance Rates

For 2023 entry, using their publicly available data, Imperial’s overall offer rate was about 26% (so 26% of students who applied were made an offer by the university of a place to study). Of those offers, about 39% ultimately came to study at Imperial. This could be for a lot of reasons: Imperial might have made the student an offer and they didn’t take it, or the student may not have met their offer grade conditions so didn’t get the place. Some students may also have chosen to defer their offer to the next year. Overall, of 30, 739 applicants, 3, 137 – about 10% – ended up coming to study at Imperial.

This is in keeping with general trends that show Imperial’s, and other universities’, admissions becoming more competitive more generally. Imperial’s offer rate has fallen from 35% for the 2019 entry cycle to 26% in the most recent 2023 cycle. This is mainly due to growth in applicant numbers as there is a demographic boom in 18 year olds and more young people choosing to apply to university. At the same time, courses haven’t expanded to meet increased demand due to funding pressures in UK higher education.

Imperial College London Acceptance Rates 2019-2023

We’ve put together a table showing the overall acceptance rates for undergraduate degrees at Imperial from 2019 to 2023, the years for which Imperial provides data. It’s important to recognise that this data provides an overall snapshot, because acceptance rates will vary a lot between individual degrees and year-on–year. For example, due to population changes and more babies being born in the UK in the mid 2000s, it’s likely that UK universities will continue to become more competitive in the future as there are simply more UK 18 year olds applying. You can see this in the data – the offer rate drops despite roughly similar numbers of offers being made, because the number of applicants is steadily increasing.

Year of Entry	Applicants	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer Rate	Acceptance rate
2019	23,532	8,271	2,857	35%	12%
2020	25,780	8,758	3,454	34%	13%
2021	28,905	7,821	3,308	27%	11%
2022	28,877	7,616	3,092	26%	11%
2023	30,739	7,948	3,137	26%	10%

As you can see, the number of students admitted is lower than the number of offers made as some students do not accept their offers or fail to meet their offer conditions. The acceptance rate (which is based on the number of students admitted) is therefore lower than the offer rate.

Imperial Acceptance Rate by Course

Most and Least Competitive Courses

It’s worth noting that Imperial’s acceptance rate can still vary a lot between courses. If we look at the data for 2023 entry, Imperial’s most competitive course, Computing, had 19.7 applicants per place. But their least competitive courses, Earth Science and Bioengineering, both had only 3.9 applicants per place. The overall applicant to place ratio was 9.6, so somewhere in the middle. When you look at the data, then, make sure to think about how it will relate to you and your application. Just making sure you meet entry requirements and sit admissions tests on time, for example, will already boost your chances above the baseline, as some applicants won’t check!

Imperial Courses with Highest Offer Rates*

Course	Applicants	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer rate	Acceptance rate
Geology with a Year Abroad (MSci)	30	27	14	90%	47%
Geology (MSci)	38	32	6	84%	16%
Geophysics with a Year Abroad (MSci)	11	9	0	82%	n/a
Earth and Planetary Science with a Year Abroad (MSci)	53	41	12	77%	23%
Molecular Bioengineering MEng (4YFT)	175	117	56	67%	32%
Materials Science and Engineering (MEng)	244	153	63	63%	26%
Geology (BSc)	87	54	16	62%	18%
Earth and Planetary Science (MSci)	51	30	10	59%	20%
Biomedical Tech Ventures (BSc)	81	47	16	58%	20%
Earth and Planetary Science (BSc)	123	71	18	58%	15%

*2023 entry, courses with at least one offer made

As you can see from the table above, the Imperial courses with the higher offer rate tend to be related to Geology or Earth Science. Geology with a Year Abroad has the highest Imperial College London acceptance rate, at 47%, with a huge 90% of applicants getting offers. This is far higher than the 26% average. These subjects can therefore be thought of as the easiest to get into at Imperial.

Imperial Courses with Lowest Offer Rates*

Course	Applicants	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer rate	Acceptance rate
Economics, Finance and Data Science (BS)	2882	188	78	7%	3%
Computing (Management and Finance) (MEng)	119	8	0	7%	n/a
Computing (Security and Reliability) (MEng)	76	6	0	8%	n/a
Computing (Software Engineering) (MEng)	438	37	12	8%	3%
Mathematics with Statistics for Finance (BSc)	256	28	10	11%	4%
Mathematics with Applied Mathematics/Mathematical Physics (BSc)	215	26	8	12%	4%
Mathematics with Statistics (BSc)	252	34	13	13%	5%
Mathematics and Computer Science (BEng)	638	99	20	16%	3%
Computing (BEng)	1443	230	74	16%	5%
Computing (Visual Computing and Robotics) (MEng)	106	17	7	16%	7%

*2023 entry, courses with at least one offer made

The data shows that Imperial’s computing and mathematics courses generally have the lowest offer and acceptance rates. The exception is the course with the lowest offer rate of all, Economics, Finance and Data Science, which was introduced as a new course for 2023 entry. Only 188 offers were made from almost 3000 applications.

The hardest subjects to get into at Imperial have offer rates below 10%, and acceptance rates around 3% – making them among the most competitive courses in the UK.

Imperial Acceptance Rates by Department and Faculty

Imperial’s undergraduate courses are divided into four faculties and nineteen departments. Looking at the acceptance and offer rates for these can help us understand which subject areas tend to be the most competitive at Imperial.

Imperial Offer Rates by Faculty, 2023

Faculty	Applicants	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer rate	Acceptance rate
Business	2882	188	78	7%	3%
Engineering	13498	3897	1527	29%	11%
Medicine	4811	1043	500	22%	10%
Natural Sciences	9548	2820	1032	30%	11%

The faculty with the lowest offer and acceptance rate at Imperial is the Business School, which offered only one course in 2023 – Economics, Finance and Data Science, which was new for that year. As seen above, this is the most competitive course at Imperial.

The other faculties have offer rates between 20% and 30%, with Medicine the lowest of the three at 22% and Natural Sciences the highest at 30%. However, Natural Sciences encompasses a very broad array of subjects (including mathematics as well as the experimental sciences) which have widely diverging acceptance rates. All three faculties have similar acceptance rates, around 10-11%.

Imperial Offer Rates by Department, 2023

	Applicants	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer rate	Acceptance rate
Business	2882	188	78	7%	3%
Aeronautics	1304	299	133	23%	10%
Bioengineering	907	475	190	52%	21%
Chemical Engineering	852	396	155	46%	18%
Civil Engineering	491	261	109	53%	22%
Computing	3576	573	183	16%	5%
Earth Science and Engineering	485	313	94	65%	19%
Electrical and Electronic Engineering	1490	473	191	32%	13%
Materials	620	300	131	48%	21%
Mechanical Engineering	2004	429	184	21%	9%
Design Engineering	715	177	102	25%	14%
Joint Maths and Computing	1054	201	55	19%	5%
Medical Biosciences	1352	395	156	29%	12%
Medicine	3459	648	344	19%	10%
Biochemistry	1754	394	157	22%	9%
Biological Sciences	1472	487	156	33%	11%
Chemistry	1492	513	225	34%	15%
Mathematics	2883	722	247	25%	9%
Physics	1947	704	247	36%	13%

As we might expect based on the previous data, the most competitive department is Business, whose only undergraduate course (Economics, Finance and Data Science) has the lowest acceptance rate of any Imperial College London undergraduate degree. Maths, Medicine and Computing all have low acceptance rates.

On the other hand, Earth Science and Engineering, Bioengineering, and Civil Engineering have the highest acceptance rates. More than 50% of students who apply to these departments at Imperial are offered a place.

Imperial College London Postgraduate Acceptance Rate

The data above refers to undergraduate-entry courses (though some are four-year MSci degrees with students working towards a Master’s). But what are the Imperial acceptance rates like for postgraduate-entry courses?

Year of entry	Applications received	Offers made	Students admitted	Offer rate	Acceptance rate
2019	33244	8935	4937	27%	15%
2020	45744	11342	5975	25%	13%
2021	45751	10950	6004	24%	13%
2022	41734	10327	5612	25%	13%
2023	40210	10994	6071	27%	15%

We can see that the offer rate for postgraduate courses is very similar to that for undergraduate courses, around 24-27% in recent years. The acceptance rate is slightly higher (13-15% vs 10-11% for undergraduate courses), indicating that a slightly higher proportion of candidates who receive offers go on to attend Imperial for postgraduate study.

How Does Imperial College London’s Acceptance Rate Compare to other World-Leading Universities?

Looking at that, Imperial seems a pretty competitive choice! However, you won’t be applying to only Imperial, so it’s useful to think about how Imperial might compare to other world-leading universities in the UK and US. European universities tend to have very different admissions systems, so they’re not included here. We’ve put together a table to show you how Imperial might compare to other universities you might be considering applying to, using 2023 entry data.

University	Total Undergraduate Applications	Total Undergraduate Offers	Overall Undergraduate Offer Rates	How This Compares to Imperial
Oxford University	23, 211	3, 721	16%	About 10% lower
Cambridge University	21,445	4,553	21%	About 5% lower
Edinburgh University	69,377	27,608	40%	About 14% higher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	26,914	1,291	4.8%	About 20% lower
Harvard University	56,937	1,942	3.4%	About 20% lower
Yale University	52,250	2,275	4.35%	About 20% lower

2023 Entry

You can see that Imperial is typically more generous with offers than Oxford or Cambridge, which is hopefully good news! To read more about the acceptance rates for Russell Group universities, including Oxbridge, UCL, LSE, and more, take a look at our in-depth guide.

You can also see that UK universities generally appear to be less competitive than their US counterparts. However, comparing US and UK applications needs to be done with caution, as UK applicants can only apply to five courses in total. This means that most Imperial applicants tend to have a realistic chance of acceptance. The same restrictions do not apply in the US.

Why is Imperial’s Acceptance Rate so Low?

While Imperial is less competitive than some of its peers, that doesn’t mean it’s a guaranteed university place: about 74% of applicants won’t get an offer from Imperial. It’s difficult to get into Imperial for a very simple reason: more students want to study at Imperial than the places the university has available. 9.6 students applied for each 2023 entry undergraduate place – a total of over 30,000 applicants. Meanwhile, there are only around 11,000 undergraduate places at Imperial across all years for those students.

Imperial’s applicant pool is also highly competitive. Imperial requires high entry grades, admissions test results and, for some courses, interviews (although this will, of course, vary between faculties and courses) to decide between the strong applicants it attracts.

Study at Imperial

If you’re looking to study at Imperial, our comprehensive guide How to Get into Imperial College London in 2025 contains all the information you need as well as many useful tips!