Biomedical Engineering interview on the 24th November.

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Alright. This may be strange that I'm posting this on a old post. But, when I was preparing for my interview, these student room forums were extremely helpful and I hope my experience will help someone else in near future. I'm a home student with achieved grades A in A level maths and bs in As physics and chemistry. I had also stated that I will re-sitting my AS modules again. And, I had an extenuating circumstance as well for my somewhat poor results. Anyways now that my background is down, I had my interview in the beginning of 2015. I received an invitation 2 weeks prior my interview. So yeah, a pretty late invitation. Now, that I had two weeks to prepare for it. I went through Internet and learnt all sorts of news and inventions that were happening around the field of Biomedical engineering and went through my maths and physics syllabus.

Then, it was the interview day. Took tube as I was living in London. Unfortunate for me, signal near Algate East wasn't working and got stuck for 30 mins. Then, finally reached "Royal School of Mines" where I had my interview. I got scared whether me being late would affect my chances of succeeding in this interview. Luckily, Imperial was lenient after all. Reached to the room where other candidates were listening presentation about BioEngineering department by the Admissions tutor. That happened for about 2 hours or so. Then, they gave us some time to get to know other people better. Surprisingly, everyone I mean literally everyone was so friendly, not arrogant or anything. Then, We got split into two groups. One group will do the team activity and other other will do the interviews in AM and vice versa in PM. Luckily, I had my team activity as the first one. We had split into little group of four and sit around one of the tables. They gave us each a biomedical instrument and a piece of A2 sheet. We had to write down the what's good about it, what's bad about it and how could we improve it. What's challenging is that you don't these people that you are working with. I had two internationals. Lol! They want to see how you work with them and your thinking. Then, we had to present our idea to everyone else. Be confident and make sure your voice is heard. Don't make it boring. Remember she is taking notes about everyone. I would say our one went pretty good and my team mates were supportive.

Then, lunch (didn't have anything apart from two bananas) and the wait for the actual interview. Got scared. Panicked. I was just recalling everything I learnt previous night. Then called my name and took me outside the room where my interview was about to happen. Each interview will be no more than 20 minutes. I had two interviewers which I found more comfortable. It was just a conversation. He asked me about how I found the day so far and how was my journey here. Then, other interview asked me a maths question. He drew a negative parabola which starts from origin and ends somewhere on the positive x axis and joint to it is a straight line. He told me to draw the gradient or dy/dx of that graph. When I first did it I got it wrong. Then he explained I got the gradient for the parabola and got the gradient of the straight line wrong. Then, he moved on to the next question and took a spoon from his folder and asked me why the image in the front of the spoon is inverted whereas on the back it isn't? I talked about focus points and how light rays emerge differently. Got that one right. Then, the general questions started to kick in. Why BioMedical Engineering? Then he asked me is there any instrument you think needs more improvement? I said dialysis and the fact it takes long and it is pretty big. He asked me how it works. I knew how it worked but, at that time I didn't know and said I don't know as I don't do biology. He also asked me what are the limiting factors about improving dialysis. I didn't know that either. Started to think this is just going bad. It got worse when the other interviewer asked me why don't we don't wheels? To be honest I didn't understand the question and answered it in a totally different way. But, he was trying to ask why is it better to have a pair of legs than two wheels?. Cos I didn't understand that question and I said I don't know as well. Then, he took a leaf from his folder and told me compare this leaf to engineering or inventions that could have been inspired from a leaf. I did pretty good and talked about a lot of things. That's it. It was done and left the room. On the way, I talked to this undergrad and told him how bad it went. He was like it should be okay. Asked other people and most of them said it didn't go too great.

They took us on tour around the college and admissions tutor and I had a small chat and I asked him how people applied this year. He said around 500 applications from all over the world. They only give about 160-170 offers, he also stated. He said I should get my result ,rejection or offer, by the following Monday. But, I didn't. I got it two weeks after the interview. Offer...A*AAA.

Last piece of advice. Know what you are talking about. Don't act like you know everything. Ask help from interviewers if you want. When you get into that room, start to be like an engineer. Think outside the box. Explain what you think properly. DONT PANICK.

Imperial College London

London

Reply 61

Tmann1125

Hey

I've also applied for biomedical engineering and got an interview but I do have a question about how maths based the course actually is? And how related it is to pharmaceuticals, thanks

Reply 62

m15es

Original post by Tmann1125

Hey

I've also applied for biomedical engineering and got an interview but I do have a question about how maths based the course actually is? And how related it is to pharmaceuticals, thanks

id say looing at the modules its quite maths based as with any other engineering
course.

BTW how long did it take for you to get your post interview decision. I have an
interview coming up.