Cambridge vs Imperial

imo it depends what the subject is. I would accept that people choose to go to Oxbridge almost always if they can, and so Oxbridge can select who they think are the best students. So it's a question of how much faith you put in their selection process. In maths I think Cambridge students probably are cleverer, because there is a high STEP requirement and STEP is a difficult exam that requires intelligence to do well in. In subjects where the primary additional selection is an interview, the more intelligent student is probably selected only a little more often than randomly.

I would be more inclined to think that Oxbridge gets most of the small minority of genuinely exceptional candidates (ie. ones who plainly stand out from other good candidates in almost any selection procedure) than that typical Oxbridge graduates are much cleverer than at other top universities.

Hard work is a confounding factor. Britain does not really do IQ-style tests like the American SAT, so all these things are trainable by less intelligent but more motivated kids.

In engineering specifically, my feeling is that people who choose Oxbridge are probably not that focused specifically on a career in engineering but rather want the prestige associated with the name. I regard that sort of person as un-serious and at a disadvantage compared to someone from eg. ICL or Cranfield that have strong industry links and a practical focus. Of course I would not decline to interview a candidate on that basis, and at interview everything is to play for, but my prejudice would be against Oxbridge there rather than in favour.

Re contradicting myself, the point I'm trying to make is that generally when one hears Oxbridge, light bulbs pop up! However, when I mention the Chinese and the IMO, I get the "they work hard but aren't really good" excuse.

Speaking of light bulbs wasn't it Edison who said that Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I believe that working hard pays the dividend, however often people see a work of genius as having been been produced effortlessly by the genius- forgetting that a lot of hard work and preparation goes into it. It's the same with regard to most fields of endeavour: people see rock-stars or gymnasts effortlessly perform on stage and don't see the many hours of blood sweat and tears that go on behind the scenes. That's part of the mystery and appeal of the performance.

With regards to the difference in perceived aptitude between Oxbridge entrants and Chinese IMO medalists: As we live in England, students are more likely to pedastalise Oxbridge success, whereas I'm sure the Chinese IMO team are highly regarded in China, especially since people who would otherwise get golds aren't always accepted onto the team. And in fact, the Chinese don't seem to hold the same regard we have for OXbridge. In the SHing-Tau uni rankings they feature much lower down on the League tables than in the Times QS or HE.

It can't possibly apply to one and not the other. People tend to automatically assume Oxbridge candidates are the best when in reality it MIGHT not be the case, as highlighted by someone in this column about the engineering sector.

Oxbridge candidates aren't always the best. There will always be good candidates who slip through the net or who don't even apply. However, because of Oxford's extensive aptitude tests, the interviews with experienced tutors and the intense competition of AAAA+ applicants for places, you would expect the better candidates do end up there.

As for the MA debate, it ceratinly would help matters if it was abolished. Imagine if a university automatically awarded PhD for their BA / BSc degrees, despite stating it's only a first degree. It wouldn't make sense and adds further confusion to the whole system, rather like the introduction of the MSci, where many have asked on TSR what kind of qualification is it.

Re your explanation why Imperial wasn't mentioned in the article featuring Simon Singh, that is exactly why there are so many people are anti Oxbridge. It not because they have a chip on their shoulders but it is clearly biased towards Oxbridge to simply say "geared towards their readership".

One could easily say Oxbridge scores 100% in everything because that's what some like to read.

Fair enough, Oxbridge is aggrandised by the media. There are other great universities too that are less often mentioned.


Their success owes a great deal to the hype that goes round it and in a similar fashion, dare I say, St. Anderws too. Before William attended St. Andrews, Edinburgh was the top university in Scotland but miraculously St. Andrews had shot up the last few years, not least with student satisfaction been given a large weighting in the calculations.

No it doesn't. One only needs to take a look at the alumni wikipedia pages of Oxbridge scientists and poets to see that. Of course your average Oxon isn't going to lead such a remarkable life, and may not even lead a successful life, but you can't say the success of the institution owes a great deal to hype. There will be unremarkable oxons who get carried by the success of the institution but you get those everywhere, and I would argue because of the subject interviews and aptitude tests, and generally the fact that oxbridge is the first choice for ugrads, the oxonians tend to be quite competent.



As for your point of tradition, isn't it "traditional" that UK students prefers to study the Arts and leave the Sciences to the Chinese and Indians so why try to change that?

As someone who's already mentioned it earlier, surely it makes sense to have to justify awarding an MA for a first degree, as it's an exception rather than the norm?

"black work"

They overemphasise anything thats hard. Like my materials supervisor last year told me. They love things like mechanical models of polymers. No one uses them, and theyre useless as **** , but its mathsy and hard!

I hate engineering.

So I've long been waiting to write this thread but I felt I had to finish my degree first and take a good look at the world so that I gain some life experience and let my head cool after Cambridge. Anyway, I did my engineering degree in Cambridge and I've tried to produce what I think of it. My main idea is that Cambridge status is overinflated as far as engineering goes. As engineering school it should be way down. Unfortunately it probably does get the best minds and serves them a **** education.

I will state my opinion early so that you have a clear vision when (and if) you read the rest of the discussion. It is my opinion that Imperial College is a better school than Cambridge as far as engineering goes. I think Cambridge is a rubbish university for doing engineering. I cannot comment on any other subject. I think this has been true for the past (10-20 years) although that is a theoretical guess based on how the history of the engineering profession and how the industry has changed. I should also point out that if you have no plans to work as an engineer after graduation then Cambridge might not be that much of a different choice than Imperial College for an engineering degree. Therefore, this discussion is mainly aimed at the people who want to work as engineers and are thinking of doing engineering at university level. As a small note before I start the main discussion. I think Cambridge is a bad engineering school for any engineering discipling but it's especially career ruining for the IEEE range of subjects.



First, lets look at the mixed course which I think is one of major problems and which ironically is one of the reasons people think Cambridge might be a good choice. I remember thinking that postponing the decision of specializing further 2 years will allow me to make a better choice. It really doesn't and you are at the same position you were 2 years ago and most likely can't make up your mind again because you happen to like all the disciplines equally. Trust me if you did mechanical engineering you will be as happy doing it as if you did civil or electrical. It is all engineering and engineering boils down to design and solving problems no matter whether you are designing a circuit or a software program or an engine flow problem. And if you still don't agree I should tell you that you will get plenty of chance to go into other fields as you graduate. But right now you need to focus on 1 thing and learn it well.

Furthermore, I do not think you have the luxury to postpone further 2 years. Life is a race and in other universities people are focused on mastering a particular discipline while you're running around doing bits and pieces of everything. Let's not forget – the reason you want to go to a good university is the same reason you want to go to a good 6th form college – it gives you a better chance of getting a good position on the next step of your life. Well your next step is getting into a good company at a good position and much like university these positions are limited. So a good engineering school is one that:
Teaches you what you need to know right now to be a good engineer and thus get into a good company.
Teaches you the skills you need to succeed in your future career and perform your job well.

The objective of teaching you well and teaching you the right things is accentuated even more because you only have 4 years to learn a good number of soft skills (presentations, report writing, how to find information, etc), get a good theoretical grounding in a certain area, learn how to apply this theory and learn a number of practical skills. So you want the university to teach you skills that will help you in the long run and in the short term. Now I hope you see why the 4 years (while enough) is better not to be wasted. You want to use those 4 years on things that will benefit you the most in the future. Otherwise stated you want the most benefit-dense course . The Cambridge engineering course is not benefit-dense. You minimize this detriment by doing mechanical, civil or aeronautical engineering but even for these disciplines there are better schools. For the IEEE range of disciplines it will destroy you as an engineer. There is no way to justify spending time on studying steel, concrete, bending beams, mechanics, structural mechanics when you are working as a software engineer and writing device drivers or a searching algorithm or your designing a circuit. 90% of your first 2 years is knowledge that you know you will not benefit you in any way in the future and you will never need. Meanwhile there is a lot of knowledge which you could have learned which will need and guess what - students at other universities are being taught that.

Supervisions are the other reason people think Cambridge is a better university. First, some background. Every 2 weeks you get a set of 10 or so questions per subject. You are supposed to do them and if you have any problems you can ask during the 1 hour supervisions (per subject). Your work is not marked but is a way to monitor you. Sounds good? Sure but the reality is that you will have done 8-9 out of the 10 questions and usually you would have problems with the last 1-2 questions. Now you have to get to the supervision (takes time) and wait 40 min till you get to the last questions. Now the supervisor will explain where your mistake is verbally. What happens when you leave the supervision is that you forget about the problem because you have to focus on the next set of questions and let's be honest – it takes a lot of discipline to go back and write down the complete solution on a problem in the past. Needless to say a much better approach (employed by 1000s of universities) is to just release a detailed solution. With such a document you can go through the solution step by step in your own time (which might take more than 20 min) and also look at your lecture notes.

A much worse complication of the supervision system is that it dictates how and when you study. You have supervisions every week and you have to have done the work for them. Some people don't study that way. University is different from College. There are a lot of ideas spawned by students spending days and weeks working on side projects instead of doing their university questions papers. For all we know Facebook might not be here if Zuckerberg was in Cambridge because he would have been pressured to do his question papers. I'm not saying he couldn't have done both but again – life is a race and as we know fresh ideas usually come up into several people's heads simultaneously. For me that's the reality of it. A solution paper made available will always be preferred to listening to someone tell me the solution verbally. At least in my college nobody liked supervisions. I can't say they thought they were not beneficial – I think most thought they were. I on the other hand am saying that it is much less effective than providing the solutions. One thing that cannot be argued is that they do provide a monitoring mechanism. I think there are much better ways to monitor that students are doing their work. And let's not forget that monitoring should not be needed. These are not 7 year olds – these are university students. If they cannot control themselves to do the work who's going to control them when they graduate? Being disciplined is part of being smart and successful. As I come to think of it right now it seems to me the supervision system is just an old relic.

The course content – very poorly structured. After your first 2 years during which you've wasted most of your time you are allowed to pick modules from a certain range. Sounds lucrative but the range is very limited and if you want your course to make sense you really have 2 choices – focus on group A of modules or group B. If you are IEEE you are not allowed to chose modules from the Computer Science department. You might think “A sounds choice”. Not in Cambridge. The IEEE range includes areas such as DSP, Communications, Computer systems, Software engineering etc. Having worked in those areas I can tell you the course in Cambridge does not offer what you need even if you know you need it at the time you pick your modules. The Computer Science course does offer it BUT you are not allowed to borrow modules apart from 1 predetermined module. Thus you cannot make a more appropriate mix from both the Engineering tripos and the CS tripos even if the IEEE would accredit your combination. This whole experience is based solely on the fact that the course contents have never helped me in my career or getting a job. This is not the experience of a lot of the people I've worked with who went to other universities. I pretty much had to come up with my own course and study it along the Cambridge course so that I can get a job. In a lot of interviews (most were successful ) I was only once asked about my 4th year project (which was dead boring) and I was once asked a control theory question. All other questions were answered not thanks to lecturers in Cambridge. For me that's a poor performance on the side of the university. I trust that they know what I need to study to be a successful and good engineer. I can't say whether they do or they don't but I can say certainly didn't teach me the right things.

There is another thing that I find damaging in Cambridge. You have ridiculous 2h small labs which you're guaranteed to get the marks for and you have 2 every week. Not only that but you don't even have to write a report. You have to fill in blanks...The equations are already provided so you don't even need to know the theory as you can quickly get what it is from the handout. It's a waste of 2h and nothing stays in your head except the fact that it was early and you were in the department building. What I'm trying to say is that there's very little original work being done. I'd much rather have longer experiments that require understanding of the theory and maybe several lab sessions. There are what they call Long Term Reports (I think that's what it was called) but there are only 2 and they aren't much bigger. Although I should say they were better and I learned something.

Now comes the problem with lecture notes. First Cambridge Engineering department is the only science department I know which does not necessarily provide it's notes online, not even to students with university accounts. Some courses provide notes, some don't. In an age in which respectable universities (MIT) have all of their course open to the public with lecture notes and videos I find Cambridge behaviour despicable. The reason it's done is so that you will go to the lectures. I think that should be up to the student and I think the student has the right to have a copy of the notes.
The content of the lecture notes is often rubbish. It looks more like reference notes on the theory and not something which is aimed at teaching a person who knows little on the subject. A lot of things are not explained, some things are assumed but the assumptions not stated, symbols not stated and used not for their standard meaning. Some notes are good (as they should be). In most cases I have the feeling the lecturer was too busy and said I couldn't be bothered.

The name Cambridge might sound prestigious to you but it will not help you more than Imperial College in advancing to the next step – a good career. The fact is above a certain level of quality, it really doesn't matter what university you've been to. When you go to an interview chances are it's not going to matter whether you got your engineering degree from Nottingham uni or from Cambridge or from Imperial. What would matter is your knowledge and skills. Chances are Cambridge would have been too theoretical and you would not have had the time or the assistance and encouragement to do anything practical. Nottingham and Imperial would have prepared you with a more useful combination of theory and practical knowledge. And don't forget – the engineers working for the company and the people interviewing you most likely didn't go to Cambridge so they wouldn't consider you having an advantage over them simply because you did so they don't care that you went to Cambridge. For them it's as good as if you had gone to their university. That's how your Cambridge “advantage” simply evaporates. It pretty much boils down to this – do you think a diploma from Cambridge is a ticket that opens doors and are you ready to be left with a piece of paper vs. being left with skills and knowledge.

I'd compare the Cambridge course to making you study random number sequences – hard but of not much use. I wouldn't even say the course is particularly hard – you have plenty of free time. I would say that if you want to be an engineer and create things then you'll have to learn this somewhere else. There are so many things that the course in Cambridge doesn't cover yet they give you a diploma in that field that it's astonishing people think it's a good university. I get the feeling they are sifting the students to find people suitable for being postdocs but the 99% that don't stay to become postdocs are completely screwed.

Finally, the students who go there are smart because of this myth that it's a good university. For me it's like a bubble that's not burst so far but I hope it does. Just make sure before you accept an offer that you research and look at what you are going to study and how the course is structured and the course contents. Make sure you compare it to other universities and look at what is required in the industry where you want to work. Really, don't care about the name – it means nothing in real life. I've seen very unsuccessful Cambridge Engineering graduates and I'm sure they can't really use their name when the guy from Manchester or whatever passes them by in his Porsche.

EDIT: PS I know some people who wanted to do Electrical Engineering and got an offer from Cambridge and Imperial and chose Imperial. I thought they were crazy. I now understand them. if you're doing IEEE run away from Cambridge.

EDIT2: I'm not sure that's a problem only in Cambridge but Jesus Christ we are engineers. I know you need to be able to learn quickly but you also need to be creative. All (note I say all not most) of the exams and tests in Cambridge are whether you've memorized something. The teaching is no different. In the real world (and on interviews) you really need to be creative as often you will have to make up a solution. No, you can't read about it - you have to invent one yourself. There was none of this in my engineering education that I can remember. They never put any effort to produce problems which involved us using existing knowledge in an unconventional way or in a way we haven't seen before. Maybe someone else has other experience from another discipline but I'd say IEEE range is one of the areas where you can be most creative.

You'd be surprised how many people go to Cambridge for name alone. I mentioned several times that students need to carefully examine the course at a university and determine whether they are happy with it. Electronics in university A might be a different course than electronics at university B because electronics is a large field.

Some say the Cambridge engineering course is harder. Maybe, I don't know. I haven't done the engineering course at Imperial but I am inclined to believe that the Cambridge course is harder. That doesn't mean it's better or more useful. If I asked you to memorise the first 100000 digits of the number π you will find if very hard but not very useful mostly because you can write a program to do that in under 2 minutes and mostly because nobody uses π to that accuracy so after digit 8 your knowledge will be redundant. So what's more useful? Learning 100000 digits of π or learning how to write a program that will give you the first N digits? Well, for me it's the second which is also easier. So if something is hard doesn't mean it's also useful. When the Cambridge professors write a bunch of cr@ppy notes and it takes you twice the time to learn the concept that a person who used a well written book then you've gained little over him but lost precious time which he most likely used to read more.

Don't worry, Mech-eng in Imperial DRIVES me crazy too. They are just too stupid to understand that having solution given out is the most efficient way to let the student learn. They are so stupid that they ask you to ''grind'' for the solutions so hard from the tutor in a 1 hour session twice a week (shared by at least 15 people). This made people that have solutions from their seniors own the game !!!!!!!!

imo it depends what the subject is. I would accept that people choose to go to Oxbridge almost always if they can, and so Oxbridge can select who they think are the best students. So it's a question of how much faith you put in their selection process. In maths I think Cambridge students probably are cleverer, because there is a high STEP requirement and STEP is a difficult exam that requires intelligence to do well in. In subjects where the primary additional selection is an interview, the more intelligent student is probably selected only a little more often than randomly.

I would be more inclined to think that Oxbridge gets most of the small minority of genuinely exceptional candidates (ie. ones who plainly stand out from other good candidates in almost any selection procedure) than that typical Oxbridge graduates are much cleverer than at other top universities.

Hard work is a confounding factor. Britain does not really do IQ-style tests like the American SAT, so all these things are trainable by less intelligent but more motivated kids.

In engineering specifically, my feeling is that people who choose Oxbridge are probably not that focused specifically on a career in engineering but rather want the prestige associated with the name. I regard that sort of person as un-serious and at a disadvantage compared to someone from eg. ICL or Cranfield that have strong industry links and a practical focus. Of course I would not decline to interview a candidate on that basis, and at interview everything is to play for, but my prejudice would be against Oxbridge there rather than in favour.

I firmed Oxford over Imperial, mainly because I didn't want to feel like I'm in China every time I wanted to do some lab work..

Which indicates they maybe don't in fact get the best students? Or was your point that racists are better at science?

My point is that I do not wish to feel like I'm in China ever time I want to do some lab work, hence I firmed Oxford over Imperial. Did I not make that clear enough in my previous post?

I think it's very clear of what he said. It does make your post sound slightly racist...

Which indicates they maybe don't in fact get the best students? Or was your point that racists are better at science?

Racist would be "Chinese students are dumb as they don't know how to have fun" or something along those lines. I merely stated that it is not an environment I wish to study in. If I said that I do not wish to live in an all white area, would that be racist?

If I said that I do not wish to live in an all white area, would that be racist?