Imperial Feedback Request

Hey,

I applied this year to study Mathematics at Imperial College London, one of a few options, but was unsuccessful. I emailed them asking for feedback and after quite a wait finally received an email that told me nothing of use at all, to summarise: they listed what they judge the applications on which, no surprise here, is exactly what they get on U.C.A.S. and they then told me that the tutors simply had to choose the best candidates. Clearly these are all things I know already and hardly helped me to understand anything.

I am intending to ring them to ask for some helpful feedback but I am unsure who to ring - does anyone have some useful experience?

Cheers - sorry such a simple question took a really long post!

Mike

I'm afraid it sounds like a case of having to choose m candidates for n places where m > n and the present day exams are simply not good enough to distinguish between the good and the great.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother asking.

It's a bit like going to an interiveiw, wearing your best suit which everyone agrees looks good on you.

However, you get rejected and when pressed for a reason, the interviewer blames your suit.

What would you do now? Change your suit, when actually it was perfectly fine?

Hey, I accept what you say, especially your spectacular suit metaphor btw. However, I disagree fundamentally. I believe that if that is the reason/argument a university gives they are being inherently lazy. In order to choose between the candidates there must either be a reason or it must be an entirely random process. If it is the former I would like to know the reason in order to better move forward. If it is the latter the least we can expect as candidates is transparency, although I am of the opinion that UCAS would hardly consider that a fair judgment.

Either way the university must have had some method of a making a decision and as a candidate I feel that after jumping through their hoops to apply, they should at least take the effort to explain their decisions to candidates.

In response to the suit metaphor this is not a job interview, this is a public system, in which the government invests enormous, if not enough, amounts of money. Therefore I feel that they are obliged to higher standards and expectations.

Thanks for your response, but I'm gonna try ringing, just wondering whose best to contact otherwise it could cost a lot