Guide

Imperial College London Acceptance Rates

Thu 12 Sep 2024 • 5 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.

Contents

Why Choose Imperial?
Recent History
2019-2023 Acceptance Rates
Comparison to Other Universities
Why is the Rate so Low?
Speak to an Admissions Expert

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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!

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.

Most and Least Competitive Courses

However, it’s worth noting that this 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 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
2019	23,532	8,271	2,857	35%
2020	25,780	8,758	3,454	34%
2021	28,905	7,821	3,308	27%
2022	28,877	7,616	3,092	26%
2023	30,739	7,948	3,137	26%

* Please note this will be lower than offers made as some students do not accept offers or fail to meet offer conditions

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 comparable universities, which is hopefully good news! You can also see that UK universities generally tend to be less competitive than their US counterparts.

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 2024 contains all the information you need as well as many useful tips!