Imperial 2009/2010 Applications and Decisions Thread

laurie344

Yeah ur grades are quite a bit better than mine. I have a good personal statement and I think I could do well in the interview so all I can do is hope really. The exams just came a bit fast for me. I'm doing 4 resits in January so hopefully get my grades up. It's the highest graded uni I applied for.
Maybe see you there!
:yep:

My idea has always been, if you get predicted 3 or more A at A level, then you have a fair chance of getting in. :biggrin:

Reply 103

darkness9999

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Name: Darkness
Course (deferred?): Meng Computing
GCSEs/equivalent:
AS/equivalent subjects + grades: A German A Maths B Physics
Predicted/actual subjects + grades: A German A Maths A Physics a AS Furthermaths
Other grades (BMAT/AEA/STEP etc): Distinction in AEA Maths and AEA German

Offer after interview on the 3rd of Dec

A German A Maths A Physics a AS Furthermaths Merit in AEA Maths

Reply 104

darkness9999

What do you think...? would i get an offer?

What's it say above your post? :p:

Bah, don't worry, you'll get a fair chance, now what you've got to do is to work for it, and show them that you deserve the place. A good PS and reference should do the trick.

Reply 105

What have all you other compsci apps have done regarding compsci activities? ;P

Reply 106

etp

What have all you other compsci apps have done regarding compsci activities? ;P

Errm, just said how I've been on a couple trips to comp sci. lecture type days at Cambridge as things i've gone to.. Also that I've semi-developed and been running an online file storage service for the last 2 years which is making a fair profit and has just over 2 million registered users..

Managed and secured a few linux servers, built several computers, outlined the A2 computing project I'm doing and a few programming languages I've self taught over the years since I was 12 or so..

Was considering quoting a couple of books I've read but I figure everyone does that, so tried to show my interest in other more practical ways.

I think the general reccommendation I got was if you have practical experience with computer science related activities to mention them, if not then to read up on a few books or the like to show your interest better.

Reply 107

mituozo

Errm, just said how I've been on a couple trips to comp sci. lecture type days at Cambridge as things i've gone to.. Also that I've semi-developed and been running an online file storage service for the last 2 years which is making a fair profit and has just over 2 million registered users..

Managed and secured a few linux servers, built several computers, outlined the A2 computing project I'm doing and a few programming languages I've self taught over the years since I was 12 or so..

Was considering quoting a couple of books I've read but I figure everyone does that, so tried to show my interest in other more practical ways.

I think the general reccommendation I got was if you have practical experience with computer science related activities to mention them, if not then to read up on a few books or the like to show your interest better.

semi-develop? :P

Reply 108

etp

semi-develop? :P

Yeah, basically I purchased the basic software and modified it to suit what we needed.. Persuaded the original developer to give me the full source code :smile:

. Ended up pretty much re-writing it but it was a good framework to work with. None the less can't really take full credit.. As much as I'd love to, hah! Tis all PHP & MySQL, been developing web applications and the like since starting at secondary school really.

I now have a developer on board also, so don't do so much of that myself these days, mainly so that I can sort my A levels out whilst continuing to run the website.. As both are pretty much a full time job if I didn't delegate the development.. It's nice to have a social life too :P

What have you ended up putting down? Interesting to compare how much experience everyone has before hand really - seems to be though that maths is more relevant than past experience, which if anything was the only downside with my AS' =/

Reply 109

Uh, about my job (bespoke stuff for medium-sized companies, ranging from intranets to report generation (with the webserver and templating engine created/running on python) - good work for minimum effort!). Project Euler and H99 - only real way to show I use the languages, everything else I make are small hacks like a 'shup'-esque program for latex and so on.

About project euler, I talked about me using Pyrex, allowing myself to appreciate the difference between compiled and interpreted language (particularly in runtime performance) and h99 allowing myself to appreciate the different paradigms (and also because haskell is my language of choice for hacks :wink:

)

talked about a few established algorithms i've used (djikstra etc) and a psuedo-ai i created wrg to a game of connect 4 and alpha-beta pruning

then just a few books i've gone through to increase my knowledge on the more compsci part of things, new turing omnibus and introduction to the theory of computation. also about the books I used to learn my main languages (little schemer (highly reccomended!) series, think python and real world haskell).

sorry for the rambling but its pretty much an account of me going "hmm what else was there" and racking my brains!

Reply 110

Ahh, impressive :smile:

. I wasn't sure how technical to get in the personal statement really - so I left out quite a bit of the detail.. I figure if they want to quiz me on it they can in an interview anyway :smile:

. Haskell's not a language I've come across other than during the brief Oxford open day - not really needed to use a purely functional language. I think Oxford and Imperial are the two main uni's that teach it right?

You taking an A level in computing then? Hoping that a degree is much more stimulating from the get go than the A level :P.. Easily sail through the A Level computing course.. Hoping it has some form of merit in my application, the project is the only chance really to do anything interesting. Only books I've really read have been reference ones, Pro C# and the .net platform, Pro WPF in C#, PHP 4, etc..

Is the New Turing Omnibus worth a read? Heard about it at almost all the open day talks, which gave me the impression that it mainly explained what Computer Science was rather than being of much worth..

Reply 111

mituozo

Ahh, impressive :smile:

. I wasn't sure how technical to get in the personal statement really - so I left out quite a bit of the detail.. I figure if they want to quiz me on it they can in an interview anyway :smile:

. Haskell's not a language I've come across other than during the brief Oxford open day - not really needed to use a purely functional language. I think Oxford and Imperial are the two main uni's that teach it right?

You taking an A level in computing then? Hoping that a degree is much more stimulating from the get go than the A level :P.. Easily sail through the A Level computing course.. Hoping it has some form of merit in my application, the project is the only chance really to do anything interesting. Only books I've really read have been reference ones, Pro C# and the .net platform, Pro WPF in C#, PHP 4, etc..

Is the New Turing Omnibus worth a read? Heard about it at almost all the open day talks, which gave me the impression that it mainly explained what Computer Science was rather than being of much worth..

Not really impressive, mainly drivel! A lot of the things I mentioned were extremely easy to do, but I had space to fill (although it's extremely awkward typing up things you've done :|). No idea about which universities teach Haskell, I think functional languages are awesome personally! When I first saw the Y combinator, I was well impressed!

Computing A2 is drivel (atleast WJEC), my attendance for AS/AS2 was 0% for theory lessons :shifty:

I think new turing omnibus is great, although it assumes some knowledge in parts! I didn't think the explanation on FSA was brilliant and so the subsequent chapters that built on it were a bit confusing. Also, theres quite a bit of set notation iirc that they assume knowledge of! But overall, I found the book extremely interesting (and quite insightful!)

Reply 112

Ah sounds good, I'll have to check it out. Our computing teacher went into a lot of depth about Finite State Automata, he said although it wasn't on the syllabus it'd be a good thing for us to be pretty aware of so hopefully shouldn't be too much of a problem. Should probably stop the Computing talk here anyway, before we completely take the thread off the rails :wink:

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Reply 113

Mithra

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mituozo

Ah sounds good, I'll have to check it out. Our computing teacher went into a lot of depth about Finite State Automata, he said although it wasn't on the syllabus it'd be a good thing for us to be pretty aware of so hopefully shouldn't be too much of a problem. Should probably stop the Computing talk here anyway, before we completely take the thread off the rails :wink:

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Bloody computing geeks :wink:

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I need some physicists to come talk about physics! Although to be honest we know nothing yet :p:

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Reply 114

Mithra

Bloody computing geeks :wink:

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I need some physicists to come talk about physics! Although to be honest we know nothing yet :p:

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My thoughts exactly... :biggrin:

Reply 115

Mithra

Bloody computing geeks :wink:

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I need some physicists to come talk about physics! Although to be honest we know nothing yet :p:

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Pssshhttt, go play with a telescope :P

Reply 116

mituozo

Pssshhttt, go play with a telescope :P

But you see physicists are not only limited to play with telescopes... That's only just for astronomy lovers... Physicists can virtually play with anything... :p:

Reply 117

Creative

xinolisss

But you see physicists are not only limited to play with telescopes... That's only just for astronomy lovers... Physicists can virtually play with anything... :p:

Oooh a Chem-Eng-er. Good choice, *gives a pat on the back* :yep:

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Reply 118

Creative

Oooh a Chem-Eng-er. Good choice, *gives a pat on the back* :yep:

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Yay what about you? CompSci?

Reply 119

Creative