Original post by dustz33Tl;dr: The place sucks, drop out rates are 18% in some departments vs 1-2% at Oxbridge, most people hate their degree, degree structures are inflexible and the whole place is run like a business (accommodation office pretty much has adopted "charge the max, **** the students" as their battle cry).
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Depends on what course you're doing. If it's Aeronautical/Chemical/Mechanical Engineering you will have no life outside of uni if you want to do well. Amongst social life, clubs&societies and significant other choose one, if you're very talented perhaps two. Forget about having a job and as far as money goes you will be having a pretty bad time on under 1.000 GBP/month (at least in my experience, that is assuming you have a double room).
The courses all have interesting titles, but in reality most people end up hating their degrees and try to get into banking. You will very rarely find a sane person that enjoys their degree. Basically everyone stays because they have invested so much money and switching is a CV killer. It is not the type of place that stirrs up fascination and deep insights or personal development. It is all about cramming stuff nobody really cares about and reciting it for your exam. The work load is huge and it is impossible to do it all, the key to success is learning to decide what you do and what you leave out. Staying up until 2 in the morning still will not be enough to master all of your material. Great preparation for 100hour weeks of grunt work in banking.
My friend has 90+ in Chemistry and still hates Imperial, her only motivation is getting into medicince at Oxford for postgrad. As far as support goes by professors, a lot is advertised, in reality it is quite bad. I know of profs who spend heir tutorial sessions having smalltalk with their students and chtting about their own research. My own professor focuses on the material, but has not really helped much. Profs always are irritated that nobody shows up to their office hours because their explanations are so terrible.
In terms of infrastructure, the campus is one of the ugliest I have ever seen, though the location is good. The central library is very shabby. In my accommodation (Wilson House) there are mushrooms growing on the ceiling and mold on the walls.
If you like business or economics, you will be disappointed as well. There are plenty of courses, but so far everyone I have been to has been irrelevant or trivial. In short, if your only academic interest is mathematic and memorising formulae, you will like Imperial. If you want to develope as a person and receive a balanced education, including economics/business/history/politics etc you will hate the place. It is ranked highly, but that is not necessarily due to good teaching or strong programs, the place was described as a "ranking machine" by one professor, since the College is good at optimising it's ranking results without actually being that great.
Afterall, choosing Imperial over Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UChicago etc as some rankings suggest would make you outright lunatic in most people's mind. Quite a few people choose Imperial over Oxbridge, all I have spoken to ended up regretting their decision.
Don't be surprised if students at the open day tell you how great the place is or give hints like "it's hard work, but it's worth it". I do the same since keeping up good appearances is in every student's interest, afterall the value of our degree depends on it. However, what I am writing here is true for about 80% of students I know, eventhough they will only admit it to close friends.
After one year of Engineering at Imperial and many personal conversations with friends in other courses I really cannot recommend Imperial in good conscience. Hardly anyone enjoys their time there. If you are rejected from Oxbrdidge, it is understandable that Imperial seems like the next best thing. It might be in terms of rankings, but certainly not in terms of prestige or quality of experience.