Civil and Environmental Engineering Applicants 2014

Might be a little late but another current student here, happy to answer questions.

I'm third year Civil Eng at Imperial.

If anyone needs persuading to accept their Imperial offers, we were rated the number one Civil Eng department in the world in the most recent QS World Rankings

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How hard is the course at Imperial? Would you say that Imperial is the best uni in the UK then if you want to become a Civil Engineer?

How much work load have you usually got on an average week? How much time do you spend studying, in lectures, etc?

It is a hard course. I usually say it's "challenging but achievable". That said, the entry requirements are high, so if you're accepted to the course then you're good enough to get through it. Don't worry about the course being too hard, Imperial provides plenty of help along the way, lecturers have office hours every week where you can get one-on-one help (though most people ask questions during the ten minute breaks during lectures), and we have our own departmental library with plenty of texts.

It's difficult to compare it to any other universities, after all, it's the only one I've been to. But I constantly hear great things about Imperial and our department, from rankings and from industry. I've spoken to a fair amount of alumni and they consistently say that an engineering degree from Imperial gets you to the top of applicant piles and through interviews easily. For some companies I've applied to you have to choose your university from a list and the only UK institutions are Imperial, Oxford, or Cambridge. If I had gone to another university then too bad. Imperial holds career fair for each faculty as well, and their careers service is really helpful and has an online catalogue of jobs.




Usually I have 22-28 hours of class time per week (lectures and tutorials). During group design projects we can be working 9am-9pm for a whole week though. In terms of outside studying it varies a lot person-by-person. My friend spends a lot of time rewriting all the lecture notes to understand them, but I just do the tutorials and that's it until it gets to revision, and I'm currently on a first. You usually get one tutorial a week from each lecturer, which means 5 - 8 per week depending on the year of study. Tutorials can rarely be finished in the one hour slot we are assigned for them so they take an hour or two each outside of class to keep up with the material.

Thanks for the answer(s)! I really appreciate this.

I have some other questions if you don't mind:

1. What advice(s) would you give someone that goes to Imperial to do Civil Engineering?
2. Is the course interesting?
3. I am currently doing Further Maths and I'll take exams in M2, S2 and FP2, is it worth doing M3 and maybe M4/FP3?
4. Is getting a 2.1 good enough to get a good job or is a 1st a must-have?

Thank you so much

2) To me it's been really interesting. I think it's quite a well-rounded degree. We do some pure maths, a lot of applied maths in areas like structures and fluids, geology, materials, microbiology (just a bit), environmental management, even a class on business & project management, and more. There's also a really good mix of exams, written coursework, and group presentations. The only thing is that you don't really get much choice in modules until Year 4. The first two years are completely fixed and in year 3 we only get to pick one module per term and the other 4 are fixed. So if you aren't that interested in one or two of the modules, you just have to deal with it, memorise the crap, and pass the exam :P

3) I did M1, M2, S1, S2, D1, FP1, FP2, and FP3, and all of them have been useful to me so far.
The Year 1 Mechanics module is the same content as M1 + M2 + a bit of other stuff which might be M3 or M4, I don't know because I didn't do those :P
The Year 3 Transport module uses most of the algorithms you learn in D1.
The Year 1 Maths module is basically FP1, FP2, and FP3. You'll certainly be in a good position if you've done those three as you basically already know this module and you can concentrate on other stuff. But honestly, you have a massive advantage just by coming through the English education system as the content and notation is very similar. A lot of people on the course are international students who may not have seen any of the Further Pure modules, or may never have seen our notation in maths, or may never have done mechanics or statistics! In first year I was shocked to find out that about 15% of people hadn't even done moments (i.e. M1 stuff) before!

4) About 95% of the job listings I've looked at say that you need a 2.1 or above. Obviously I don't know how much higher up the list a 1st will get you, but there are a lot more application stages nowadays, so if it's good enough to get you through to interview/assessment centre then they will probably put more weighting on what you say in interview, etc. About 25% of people finish this course with a 1st apparently, but 98% have a job within 6 months (according to the Guardian when I applied) so just having a degree from Imperial means more than the grade.

1) Hard question so I saved it for last. Hopefully I've already written a lot of useful information but let's see.


Hope this helps. How are your applications going? Have you had an interview/offer with Imperial yet? or any other unis? It was a while since I did UCAS :P

Okay I've written way more than I intended. Time to go and watch Sherlock!

Got all my offers!

I attended an interview day for the University of Southampton (3 years ago though). It was quite relaxed, there was a talk on the course, followed by a tour around campus by current students, and finally a one-on-one interview. The interview was very laid back, the guy had my UCAS application in front of him. The first thing he said was that he'd just finished reading it and was very impressed, then he just picked out a few points from my personal statement and asked me to talk more about them. After about 15 minutes he said I would be receiving an offer and was free to go home.

The interview was for civil engineering?
If so, are you still studying civil engineering? Where?
Sorry for the questions

Yes it was for Civil Eng, and I'm currently studying Civil Eng at Imperial.

Had my recruitment day at Imperial, wasn't that bad .

Can i ask what the meeting at the end of the day was about? Was the group discussion the only interview type thing you did? Got my recruitment day in a couple of weeks... (sorry I'm a month late to this page)

Without giving too much away, there aren't interviews at the end; you choose an academic member specialising in different areas to have an informal conversation with in groups of 3. My academic member just took me and 2 others in my group around the place and asked some basic questions (nothing technical).

The group discussion is probably one of the most important parts of the day, everyone has the opportunity to talk about what motivates them to study Civil Engineering, make sure you speak up without being dominant.

There is also a test, it isn't particularly hard, calculators are allowed. I didn't do so great on my test but I still managed to get an offer. Good luck!