Yes - although lots of other engineering courses ask for Physics and/or Further Maths at A Level, we are looking for a diverse cohort with a wide-ranging academic background. This means we look on applicants who are taking Maths, Design Technology and Music as favourably as those taking Maths, Physics and Further Maths.

We know that attainment in A Level Maths and Further Maths can be a barrier for some students to gain a place at university to study STEM. With the expert support of the Department of Mathematics, we are running a massive open online course (MOOC) for Further Maths A Level students to complement our existing A Level Maths MOOC and raise attainment in advanced mathematics among young people from underrepresented backgrounds. 

We are also working with a partner school, Woodhouse College, in developing a new maths school that intends to target underrepresented groups. 

Our offers are not based on UCAS points but specific qualifications, therefore additional qualifications will not exempt you from meeting our A*AA (A* in Mathematics) minimum offer.

However, if the additional qualification demonstrates skills and interests that are relevant to Design Engineering, this will strengthen your application.

Yes, we may still consider your application under the following circumstances:

Students who meet our ‘widening participation’ criteria* will be guaranteed an interview if their predicted grades meet the College minimum entry standard of AAA at A Level (or an equivalent qualification). If they have shown significant potential in their application, we may also consider candidates who meet our ‘widening participation’ criteria with predicted grades below AAA. Please note, this is at the department’s discretion and shortlisting decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

If you are predicted AAA and do not meet our ‘widening participation’ criteria, the other parts of your application will need to be very strong for you to be shortlisted to interview. Our minimum offer is A*AA (with A* in Maths), so in such instances you would need to perform better than your predicted grades to meet our offer conditions. 

We don’t mind if it takes you longer than the usual two years to achieve your A Levels. As long as your predicted grades at the time of your application are at least AAA, we will view your application on an equal footing with those who have completed their A Levels in one sitting.

Other than your English Language grade, we do not look at your GCSE grades.  We look at your predicted grades at A Level or equivalent.

We may look at the GCSE subjects you have studied, if they are relevant, such as Art or Design Technology.

Yes, you will. All our students need to have a GCSE grade 6 (GCSE B grade, pre 2017) in English Language (or equivalent, see link below). If you do not have a grade 6, this will not affect whether or not you receive an offer, but you will have to obtain an alternative English language qualification (or retake the GCSE) to meet your offer conditions.

Accepted English Language qualifications can be found here:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/apply/requirements/english/

We accept Warwick’s International Foundation Programme in Engineering and UCL's Undergraduate Preparatory Certificate for Science and Engineering (UPCSE). For further information, such as required modules and pass rates, please refer to our prospectus.

We are unable to accept other foundation courses and Imperial does not run its own foundation course.

If you have taken a foundation year in Art, this will strengthen your application, but you will still need to have met our A Level (or equivalent) requirements.

Personal statements should reflect who you are; for example, your interests, achievements and experience.

Some applicants are able to talk about work they have done; others choose to talk about their school or personal design project or perhaps items they have made.  Some will discuss activities they have engaged in. So it is a very personal statement – personal to you.

We are keen to see whether an application is aligned to the type of degree we are offering. Our degree has a mix of design, manufacture, analysis, creativity, innovation and design-engineering. We do not expect students to arrive with all these skills, instead we expect to be able to gauge the level of interest and aptitude from the statement.

The most important thing to put in your Personal Statement is specific examples to back up any claims you have made. Don't just say 'I love designing things', instead, say 'I love designing things such as the balloon rocket car I made and designed for a School competition' etc. (don't put that specific example though - we'll spot it and know you stole it from here!).

For further guidance, see our 10 Do's and Don'ts of Personal Statements.

We do not accept additional personal statements.

We recommend that, without explicitly stating a course title, you include the skills, qualities and experience that you feel are relevant to Design Engineering. These are skills that will make you a strong applicant for any similar or related course.

We do not expect our applicants to have professional work experience.  However, it is worth telling us about any relevant volunteering or amateur projects / research you may have participated in.

Being able to sketch will put you at an advantage, but sketching is a fundamental skill, such as Electronics or Mechanics, that we will be teaching in our First Year to ensure that everyone has the knowledge and skills necessary for the course.

That said, if you drew one quick sketch per week between now and the course start date, you'll find that you improve significantly and will be more comfortable studying the course.

Our course is extremely hands-on so all making is strongly encouraged. Depending on where you live and your family’s financial means, there are various activities you may want to explore such as:

• learning coding online at codeacademy.com (free)
• developing your maths skills with www.khanacademy.org khanacademy.org (free)
• building prototypes out of cardboard etc.
• taking apart broken appliances
• sketching
• CAD modelling on a computer
• laser cutting/wood working
• Lego robotics (and the possibly more advanced robotics)
• 3D printing
• Online lectures and courses provided by the BBC and universities such as MIT
• Follow us on Twitter for information on news, events and opportunities related to Design Engineering (@ImperialDyson)
• Check out our YouTube Channel for further inspiration: Design Engineering YouTube Channel
• Explore Imperial College's Outreach pages for engineering-related activities for students of all ages.

Design Engineering covers a wide range of areas so you should pursue whatever area interests you most – we encourage our applicants to have different strengths and interests.

Yes, we do hold interviews and every successful candidate will have been interviewed.

Interview invites are sent via email.  Once you have applied, it is a good idea to review your junk email folder from time to time, as occasionally our interview invitations can be auto filtered.

Interviews take place from the autumn, usually commencing from November and concluded in March.  You will be given around a week’s notice of any interview date.

No, we only interview the strongest applicants based on their UCAS applications.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, our interview process was moved online and all interviews are now conducted remotely via Microsoft Teams. This should hopefully make it easier, logistically, for candidates to attend. However, if for any reason you are unable to attend your interview, please do get in touch so that we can rearrange this for a mutually convenient time.

Pre-interview exercise - Just before your interview, you will be emailed a pre-interview exercise to work on. Don't worry, this is not a test! It's a chance for you to prepare in advance for some of the interview questions. You will be given full details in advance of your interview and do not need to prepare anything, although it is advisable to have paper and pencils/pens to hand, as you may be asked to do some sketching. This is not a test of artistic ability and is merely to help communicate your thoughts and assist discussion during the interview.

During the interview - The interview will test you on your design, technical and mathematics skills as well as your motivation for applying to the subject. The interview will be largely discussion-based, although, as with the pre-interview exercise, you are welcome to have paper on hand to work out any problems if you wish and you may of course refer to any of your notes/sketches from the pre-interview exercise.

It is not a requirement to bring a portfolio to your interview; however, if you have an existing one, you are very welcome to present examples of your work. These may be either fully resolved, works in progress or, for instance, preliminary sketches of ideas. Please note a maximum of two minutes will be allotted to this, so careful selection is advised. Given that all interviews shall take place remotely, when considering the selection of work to present, we would suggest you consider how such work adapts to the online medium and select examples accordingly.

Most offers will be made after mid-January (after the UCAS deadline) and many people won't hear until after all interviews are completed (mid-March). You should hear one way or the other by the end of March.

No. A*AA is our minimum offer and we would not make an offer below that.

(NB. If you are taking the SIPCAL, Scottish Highers or if you completed your English A-Levels before 2010, then our offer will reflect that you will not be awarded A*)

Yes. Depending on various factors, including your interview performance, we may make you a higher offer of A*A*A or equivalent.

Our standard offer is A*AA or equivalent. In some circumstances we might make slightly higher offers, but this would be usually involve asking for higher grades on three A-Levels rather than asking for four.

If you are not confident that you can achieve A*AA as part of four A-Levels, you should drop down to three; we do not consider AAAA to be the same as A*AA.

A significant number of our successful applicants have only studied 3 A-Levels.

If you want to apply for deferred entry, you can do this via UCAS. If you do not mention the reasons for applying for deferred entry in your personal statement, we may contact you for more details on what you plan to do with your year out of education.

Maths skills atrophy very quickly when they are not in regular use, therefore you will need to demonstrate strong maths skills in your interview and your school qualifications.

If you plan on spending your gap year working on Design Engineering-related projects, we strongly recommend that you apply during your gap year, if possible, as writing about your gap year activities will strengthen your application.

Taking a gap year will not necessarily count against your application. However, as with many engineering courses, we do have concerns that your maths skills may atrophy over the break. You should continue doing weekly maths revision throughout the year, and expect to be rigorously tested at interview. If you do not maintain your A Level Maths skills, you may struggle to succeed during your first year.  

It is your responsibility to ensure that you remember and retain all of your A Level Maths! There are many excellent, free online resources to help you practice, such as KhanAcademy.com.

As well as Maths, there are certain activities you can do in your gap year that will strengthen your application. If you participate in activities that demonstrate a continuing interest in design or engineering, this will count in your favour. You should be sure to include these in your personal statement.

If there are circumstances during your A Level years that you believe will affect your A Level performance, you must do two things as soon as possible:

• Firstly, notify your school of these issues. Your school will notify your exam board/s and it is up to the exam board/s to adjust your grade as they see fit. We cannot assess the impact circumstances have had on your A Levels; that can only be done by your school and exam board.

• Secondly, notify us of these circumstances before your results are released. We will make a note of your circumstances on your record.
  As a general rule, we will not accept you with lower results because of mitigating circumstances. Your school and exam board should have already taken those circumstances into account when awarding your grades. However, there are other times when we may consider your application in the light of mitigating circumstances, such as if we have space for ‘near-miss’ candidates on results day or when assessing your interview performance. Such information will also help us support you if you do come to study with us.

Please note, we may request formal proof of your circumstances from you or your school.

We do not accept transfers into later years of the course.  If you have studied for a year at another university or course at ICL then you are welcome to apply to start our course from the first year.

You will also have to pass all modules and achieve the equivalent of 65% in a UK degree during your existing year at university. 

If there are any mitigating circumstances affecting your existing studies, you must raise these with your existing university as we are not in a position to assess the impact of such circumstances on your current studies.

Transferring from another university - to transfer from another university, please apply via UCAS.com. The deadline to apply for entry in 2024 is 18:00 (UK time), 31 January 2024.

Transferring from another ICL course - to transfer from a different department at ICL, please send a one-page personal statement to design.engineering@imperial.ac.uk from your ICL email address. Your email should include your full name, current department, your A Level results and your CID number. Your personal statement should include your motivations for switching courses and any relevant design engineering experience. You will need to ask someone from your current department to email a reference directly to the email above from their ICL email address.

The deadline for ICL applications is the last day of the Easter holidays.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer individual tours to prospective students. However, we have a lot of information for prospective applicants on the Dyson School of Design Engineering web pages, including the latest news from the department and opportunities to connect with us.

Our department will be represented at all undergraduate open day events and you can take a virtual tour of our facilities and the South Kensington campus via the Imperial College website.