I think that merger between IC and UCL they were talking about a couple of years go would have been interesting..
Would have made us the biggest uni in the country (at the time.. dunno about Manchester now) and with UCL being debatably one of the best for law et al and a stat I remember seeing calling it the most cited university or something, thered be no stopping us!
But I fear with the amount of courses they offer dwarfing ours, we'd have just been devoured and become a single appendage to one massive UCL beast..
I quite like the idea of colleges/houses.. especially if they all had distinct personalities. Just like studying Maths at Trinity College, Cambridge or Balliol for politics etc is perceived as *the* places to be for that subj, there could be a similar system within IC, but perhaps with a vocational slant to show off our relations with industry and to prey on Oxbridge's weakness of preparing for academe.. eg studying maths at X college/house, IC is *the* place to be if you want to get into the big Investment Banks or something..
I think forging stronger links with alumni is pretty important too.. would be nice to go into an interview and the interviewer asking what house you were at IC and then either jibing at it ("their football team still propping up the league table?") or giving a nod and slight wink..
Another way could be with IC getting in on that crazy 'one uni only' action that Oxbridge have with UCAS.. candidates wanting to study Aero/Mech Eng/Computing etc can only apply to Ox, Cam or Imperial... would be interesting to see if that would work (or completely backfire..)
Thoughts?
fais