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 2nd 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. For more information on the offer and acceptance rates for Medicine at Imperial, and how they compare to other top universities, take a look at our G5 Medicine acceptance rates guide.
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 |
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!
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Sources
http://https//www.topuniversities.com/universities/imperial-college-london