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Why Imperial has highest Computing applications ratio?

Why does Imperial College have highest applications per place for Computing(18:1)? Does it simply mean there are too many underqualified applications or does it say about the competitiveness/ quality of the course at Imperial? Does a high application rate make it more difficult than even Oxbridge? I am worried that all this means I might not have a chance at any of the best universities in UK because application rates are rising very quickly for Computer Science.
Original post by Anonymous
Why does Imperial College have highest applications per place for Computing(18:1)? Does it simply mean there are too many underqualified applications or does it say about the competitiveness/ quality of the course at Imperial? Does a high application rate make it more difficult than even Oxbridge? I am worried that all this means I might not have a chance at any of the best universities in UK because application rates are rising very quickly for Computer Science.


Why would it mean there are too many underqualified applications?
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Reply 2
Original post by 999tigger
Why would it mean there are too many underqualified applications?

I do not mean underqualified in the conventional sense. I mean they might just take out the applicants with highest predicted grades possible and make them compete in interviews and admission tests or conditional offers? Or they might give a chance to all applicants to prove themselves by inviting many to interviews and admission tests to screen out the best applicants. I know 5 applications are very less and no one who is underqualified for the course would even care to apply. What I mean is, Applicants whos scores are lesser as compared to the applicant pool, do all of them compete for offers down to the conditional offers, or do the universities just take them out and only leave like 2 or 3 applications per place to keep their work easy?
I am just worried that if I do not get a very high predicted score, they might not even interview me seeing I have lesser scores as compared to other applicants for the place?
Reply 3
There's been a significant rise in the number of applicants these past few years, and not just at Imperial but it seems for all computing courses.
Cambridge now receives 4x as many computer science applications as they did in the 2011/12 cycle. UCL receives more than 3x as many as it used to. At Imperial the number of applications has nearly doubled in five years. This is all for BSc/BEng. But they can't start taking in 3 or 4 times as many students as before, they're still limited by the cost of teaching, the space available, the staff available. So the result is it just becomes more competitive.
admissions rate does not equate to offer rate
The true offer rate is 1 in 5, but most of the offer holders did not accept/enroll because they went elsewhere (Oxbridge)
Original post by Anonymous
I am just worried that if I do not get a very high predicted score, they might not even interview me seeing I have lesser scores as compared to other applicants for the place?

Could happen, for a highly competitive course like CS, they will definitely slim down the number of candidates prior to interviewing because there simply isn't enough staff hours to interview every candidate.

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