Admissions information

Our requirements are given below.

Please note that due to the very high number of fantastic applicants we are not able to interview or make offers to every applicant who is predicted to meet the grades below, or who already has exceeded these grades.

Please also note that conditional offers are often higher than the entry requirements stated below. For example, for applicants taking 3 A levels, the typical offer is A*A*A*, and for those taking 4 A levels, the typical offer is A*A*AA. For IB the typical offer is 40 overall with 7 in higher level Physics and Maths.

Finally, please also note that applications are considered even if predictions do not meet the requirements stated below. For example, we do often make offers to IB applicants who are predicted 6 in HL Maths. 

What if my qualifications are not listed above?

If you feel that you are a very strong applicant for our course, but the qualifications you are taking do not meet any of the minimum requirements given above, please email us on me.admissions@imperial.ac.uk to ask if we will consider your application.

Widening Participation Admissions Scheme

If your predicted grades do not meet the minimum requirements given above, you may be eligible for a guaranteed interview under the College widening participation admissions scheme. For more information about this please see the admissions scheme webpages.

Mechanical Engineering requires English language attainment at the Standard level; please read the College web page on English language requirements.

Selection is based on consideration of academic ability, motivation for study, interest in the subject area and the potential both to benefit from the experience and contribute to College life while on the course.

Please be aware that most applicants are predicted to meet or exceed our minimum entry requirements, and demonstrate good motivation for studying mechanical engineering. Due to the high number of extremely competitive applications for a strictly limited number of interview places and offers, we are regrettably not able to interview or make an offer to every suitable applicant. The ratio of applicants to places on our course has been around 10:1 for the last few years.

We do not accept transfers from other universities. If you are at another university and wish to apply for our course, you must apply via UCAS for first year entry.

If you are on another course at Imperial, we can only consider a transfer into the start of our first year. We do not accept transfers from other courses at Imperial later in the course. This is because there are often content differences in first year modules, even if the overall curriculum is similar. To ensure that students thrive in our second year, we require them to have the solid grounding in aspects of engineering science covered by our first year.

The degree programmes offered by the Department of Mechanical Engineering are:

• MEng in Mechanical Engineering
• MEng in Mechanical Engineering with a Year in Industry
• MEng in Mechanical Engineering with Nuclear Engineering
• MEng in Mechanical Engineering with Nuclear Engineering and a Year in Industry
• MEng in Mechanical Engineering with a Year Abroad
• MEng in Mechanical Engineering with a Year in Industry and Abroad

Students must apply for MEng in Mechanical Engineering, and transfer to the other course at the appropriate time during the course, selection criteria may apply.

Maths and Further Maths are two different A Level subjects. Further Maths is useful, because there are some topics e.g. complex numbers, hyperbolic functions, that are really useful to engineers and we study them on our course. Applicants that have already studied these topics in Further Maths have slightly less work to do when they join our course, but it is not significant compared to the overall workload.

Taking 4 A levels is useful, because it means applicants are used to coping with a high workload.  

We are aware that not all schools offer Further Maths or the option to take 4 A levels, and we keep this in mind when making admissions decisions.

We do not offer work experience. Opportunities to visit the department are coordinated centrally – please see the college open days, events, summer schools and visits webpages.

You should use your personal statement to demonstrate that our course is right for you and that you have the skills and attitude to thrive on our course.

 It can be useful to highlight things that inspired your interest in our course, including:

• work or voluntary experience you have undertaken
• extracurricular activities

 You may also want to use your personal statement to outline:

• your career aspirations and motivation for the future
• other personal achievements and interests; artistic, sporting, musical, community, part -time work or other

We do not have a reading list that we would recommend to potential applicants. You can have a look at our module details on our webpage and research topics that might interest you.

Engineering and Science Admissions Test (ESAT).

For Mechanical Engineering at Imperial, the three parts you are required to take are Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics.

You must register for this test in advance. Find out more about the ESAT and how to register for 2025 entry.

Selection for interviews will be a holistic decision based on content of your UCAS application and your test score. There is not a fixed weighting that we will apply to these two components, and it is not possible to give an indication of a cut-off score or average score of applicants invited for interview.

The interview will be 25- 30 minutes with a member of academic staff. During the interview we will try to assess your potential to benefit from our course. We might ask you about things you have mentioned in your personal statement and explore your ability to think like an engineer. We will want to know about your interest in engineering.

Interviews will be held online on Wednesday afternoons between November and March. We will invite selected applicants via email. Selected applicants should expect one to two weeks’ notice if they are chosen for an interview.

Applicants can access UCAS Track to follow your progress and status of the application.

You are likely to hear the outcome of your application in March after all interviews have been completed.

We accept applications right until late January, we read and assess applications very carefully, and we continue making decisions right up to the end of March. Even if you have applied in October, you may not hear anything until March. Please bear with us.

Registry Admissions teams are responsible for the receipt and processing of all applications to Imperial College. Each team deals with admissions for different departments. If you have submitted an application, have received an offer, or are waiting for a decision on an application, and you have a specific question relating to your application or offer, you should contact the appropriate Admissions team:

admissions@imperial.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7594 7243.

Please note that the contextual admissions scheme guarantees an interview to some home applicants – for more information see the Imperial webpages on Admissions Schemes.

For all scholarship queries, please follow this link and contact the Student Finance Support team if you need more guidance.

We do not offer tours of the department. Applicants interested in visiting the Campus can book a general campus tour: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/visit/campus-tours/

You can also take a virtual tour of spaces and facilities in the department. 

Conditional offers are often higher level than the entry requirements – for example for an applicant taking three A levels the offer might be A*A*A* and for 4 it might be A*A*AA. If an applicant taking A levels is eligible for the contextual admissions scheme, then the offer will be the same as the entry requirement, otherwise is usually higher. 

Offer-holders are invited to attend an in-person Offer Holder Day on Saturday 26^th April 2025. Further information will be communicated to offer-holders directly. This is an opportunity to look round the department, meet staff and students, and hear more about the course.

The Department has dedicated computer rooms for students who need access to software on campus. Students can log in to the system using their own College account. Remote desktop connections are also possible if students find it more convenient to access the College computer from their laptops or computer at home.

Most engineering software applications such as CAD software are not supported on Mac OS. Hence, it is advisable for students to access a College computer should they need to use the appropriate software.

There are no compulsory technical specifications regarding personal laptops, if you wish to buy one. However, it is suggested for your laptop to match (at least) the specifications of the College computers. In this way you might find easy to switch your work between campus PCs and your personal laptop. Some teaching software can be licensed for personal laptops too and you can use these indistinctively on campus machines or on your laptop.

Newest campus computers have the following specifications:

• Intel I7 3.6 GHz CPU
• 16 GB RAM
• 512GB SSD drive

Laptop with I5 processors and SSD drives of 256GB will work almost as well; the important part is the 16GB of RAM.

Further guidance on ICT for the Department can be found on our ICT and Computing support page.

You may apply to defer your admission to the next academic year.

Requests for deferral are considered at the discretion of our academic departments.

Please email me.admissions@imperial.ac.uk

If you have a disability, physical health condition, mental health condition, a specific learning difficulty or Neurodivergent diagnosis (such as Dyslexia, Autism and ADHD), or you believe that you may have one of these diagnoses, please note that support is available within the department and wider college. Please feel free to contact us in confidence at meddo@imperial.ac.uk if you have any specific concerns or enquiries.

You can also contact the Student Wellbeing advisor in confidence if you have a personal difficulty or circumstance that may affect your studies or experience on the course at n.jackson-macfarlane@imperial.ac.uk .