UCL or imperial?

To be fairly honest, prestige is a bit important but I want the university experience. I'd hate having to spend my time spending a lot of money in a place where it just stresses me out. I guess for me postgraduate is a time where you'll specialize and I guess in that respect I could apply to a more specialized course. I've heard horrible stories from Imperial where students have to firm it because they're too stuck in and I don't want to be in that position

If I'm entirely honest with you, if you want the university experience, consider going outside of London. UCL is bags of fun (as is Kings) but it's a totally different experience to going to a campus uni. At UCL, as a fresher, one way or another you're going to have halls somewhere fairly central that cost a bomb and your daily experience will be a dragging all your stuff to various lectures/tutorials/labs splattered all around Bloomsbury, or possibly even further afield. Everything is expensive, rushed and stressful and sports are made at best quite inconvenient to participate in. After first year, you'll probably be living in what is at absolute best a bit of a dodgy area. On the plus side, what you do get is to see the big city and experience London. If you're reading Chemistry, I'm not sure that's a worthwhile trade. You'll have more of a uni experience in one term at somewhere like Nottingham or Bristol than you will in years at UCL. UCL is in Camden and is very much a microcosm of Camden. Mad, expensive, eclectic, a bit trendy and a bit scummy and fairly unique and instantly recognisable worldwide.

Um, what do you mean by "If you're reading chemistry, I'm not sure it's a worthwhile trade?"

If you were reading like Law with a mind to practise, where there is a genuine benefit to being in London - then that would be something to consider. You can get a decent Law degree out of London, but things like pro-bono work, vacation schemes and mini-pupillage are a nuisance to access in term time if you're not in the big city. Same situation for banking type careers. If you're reading Chemistry, I don't see a huge benefit from the mere fact of being in London.

Well no because lots of chemistry grads don’t go into chemistry afterwards, so being in London is a great opportunity to explore and enter other sectors.

Sure, but your judgement will be whether that is worth the trade off for the university experience. In my estimation, that would be no, but you may come to a different conclusion.

You're honestly talking so much nonsense. I did Undergrad in Chemistry at Imperial and almost every person is either in top banking jobs, top consulting jobs or at Oxbridge/Imperial for PhD and there is huge benefit to being in London for Internships.

Prestige matters a huge amount, you would have to be an idiot to turn down Imperial to go to Nottingham. Theres a reason Imperial has the highest % of students with graduate jobs out of all UK universities. Having an Imperial degree makes it far easier to get top jobs and get top PhD places, due to this prestige.

In regards to London, Imperial has amazing accommodation in North Acton - brand new - that is cheaper than anything UCL has to offer.
Social life is also as good or as bad as you want to make it. You could go out every night if you wanted to and you have the whole of London to explore.

I don't think you understood what my post was saying. I didn't suggest they should go to Nottingham over Imperial because it was "better". I said that if they valued the university experience, they wouldn't really get it in London and that what they were looking for was more readily available at an out-of-London campus university.

The idea that someone who is interested in a university experience should choose to read Chemistry at Imperial because it will help them get into Banking is so tangential as to be absurd.

'If you're reading Chemistry, I don't see a huge benefit from the mere fact of being in London.'
If 60% of people are going into Banking or Consulting (values from my cohort) why would there be no benefit to being in London. If you go to a prestigious university, it doesnt matter what youre studying - the chances of getting into an elite company are far higher.
More people get into GS, MS, JPM, UBS etc every year from doing Chemistry/ Physics etc from Imperial than those doing Economics at Nottingham.

Spot on - most investment banks prefer Imperial/UCL over Oxbridge.