Imperial VS Oxford

Oxford is definitely slipping both in terms of graduate earnings and research, clearly reflected in their drop in rankings (especially in the QS). I would say UCL over Oxford.

Well as far as salaries are concerned, it's an established fact that Imperial graduates earn more than graduates from every other UK university excluding LSE. Mind you, the difference in average starting salaries between IC and LSE graduates is very small.

I'm basing this on the time suniversity guide 2011

Just go with what you are happier with.
Honestly, your career prospects will be fantastic at either, so you should just choose the place you like more (because if you like it, and like the course, then you are far more likely to excel)

Edit:
Why the neg rep?
There is no point of going to, say, Oxford and getting a 3rd or not passing, when you could get a 1st or 2:1 at IC. Not that ICs course will be any easier.
If you neg rep me for that, frankly you are an idiot.

If you look at the portion of class honours, it's actually more 'difficult' to get a third from Oxford than a first! Hardly anybody from the entire university ends up with a bare pass (and Oxford also has a very low drop-out rate).

Oxford is definitely slipping both in terms of graduate earnings and research, clearly reflected in their drop in rankings (especially in the QS). I would say UCL over Oxford.

At the same time it's more difficult getting a 2:1 at Oxford (and Cambridge) than pretty much everywhere else, and employers are interested in those getting a 2:1 and above, not a third. Also, a smaller proportion of people achieving something doesn't automatically make it harder, obviously.

It does mean once you get accepted into an Oxford programme, you are more likely to get a 2:1 than anything. My point anyway is that I don't see how someone could get a first at Imperial but a bare pass at Oxford doing the same programme.

Yeah, I agree it'd be pretty improbable that someone with a first from ICL not end up with at least a 2:1 at Oxford.

If you look at the portion of class honours, it's actually more 'difficult' to get a third from Oxford than a first! Hardly anybody from the entire university ends up with a bare pass (and Oxford also has a very low drop-out rate).

Entirely true, although Imperial's good honours rate is not much lower.

However 10% of people do not graduate with good honours, and if you have good reason to think you might be one of them at Oxford but would get good honours at Imperial I could not possibly advise choosing Oxford.

Of course the next question is how could someone make a judgement on how they will do at one institution versus another before they have attended either, but again I can conceive of scenarios where they could and we can't pretend to know better than them.

I heard Imperial is so hardcore that biology is seen as a soft subject.

At the same time it's more difficult getting a 2:1 at Oxford (and Cambridge) than pretty much everywhere else, and employers are interested in those getting a 2:1 and above, not a third. Also, a smaller proportion of people achieving something doesn't automatically make it harder, obviously.

Imperial College is better than Oxford in pretty much every course that it offers, whether it's medicine, engineering, maths or pure sciences at both undergrad and postgrad. Imperial graudates also have higher starting salaries than oxford graduates.

Indeed, the biologists are our "philosophy students" – sit around, read, seem to have nothing to do, etc.

For what it's worth, in physics at least, we're doing a third year Oxford course in our second year; it's a pain in the arse, but that's another story altogether.

Most departments are very well organised (apart from physics, ironically), though I've never studied at Oxford so couldn't really compare the two institutions.

Imperial starting salaries are inflated somewhat because of the large quantity of people that go to work for investment banks (£45k starting salary + sign-on bonus). Having said that, about half of people stay in academia.

Which course incidentally? I was speaking to a 3rd year physicist at Imperial the other day and it seems that our second years are pretty much identical...

Well essentially my year has been very much a "guinea pig" year; they've changed the structure of the course such that all the material necessary for accreditation by the IoP is covered in years 1 and 2. To achieve this they ripped the solid state physics course out of third year and plonked it into second year.

Blatantly untrue. Check the stats. These universities scale results such that a certain % get a certain class. People getting thirds looks bad on the institutions themselves, too.

Yes, but they're not proportionately higher. If you actually think they're scaled in such a way that a 2:1/first from other top universities is equivalent to a 2:1/first from Oxbridge then you'd be disagreeing with most academics, including external examiners for Oxford on public record. Note I'm not saying this is true for ALL non-Oxbridge universities, hence the "pretty much everywhere else" in my original comment.

Ouch yeah we don't do that until next year... But from what I gleaned, our stat mech course in second year covers most of your 3rd year stat mech and our classical mechanics course in first year covers more than all the classical mechanics in your degree - though you do a bit of quantum in first year.

From what I gather is that your course does a bit of everything each year and builds it up each year whereas my course takes a topic and covers all the undergrad material in that topic in one go... with the exception of electromagnetism where there is a first year easy course which is basically everything that isn't relativistic and isn't in materials and then the second year course which is about EM in materials and a bit of relativistic EM.