University Prep
Some useful links to getting your UCAS personal statement to best reflect you and you passion for Computer Science
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UCAS - Guide to writing personal statements and https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/ucas-personal-statement-worksheet.pdf
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UCAS Personal statements
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A selection of personal statements to draw inspiration from when applying to study Computer Science - especially at UK Russel Group universities
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Interview practice
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Practise Questions to use with A-Level Students
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Oxford University
- Computer Science example interview problems
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Cambridge University
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Oxbridge
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Imperial
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website - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computing/prospective-students/
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comments from a past applicant
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Student interview - from Chloe Lau, who studies Computing at Imperial College
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" Interviews (and interview questions) at Imperial vary widely, depending on who you get as your interviewer.
If you have any programming experience, as exemplified by your A-levels (or equivalent) or your personal statement, be prepared to answer some coding questions. If not, your questions will be largely maths-based, but the type of maths will vary.
I, for example, had no programming experience whatsoever, aside from a tutorial or two from CodeAcademy. My interviewer was a logic programmer, and both my interview questions were related to logic (she gave me the option to choose another facet of maths for the second question, but I enjoyed the first question so I went for another logic question. I should probably clarify that ‘logic’ here does not refer to propositional/predicate logic or anything you learn under the logic modules at Imperial, but rather logic-based, brain teaser type maths questions). After these two questions, she asked me the standard “Why Imperial? Why Computer Science and not Maths?” and some questions regarding my personal statement.
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Comparatively, a friend of mine who had also never programmed before got two calculus questions, one I am unsure I would have been able to answer as well as I had answered the logic questions.
I would say to be prepared for the standard maths interview questions (probability, drawing graphs etc), make sure your maths in general is up to scratch and you’ll probably do just fine :)"
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" I had an interview in December and although my interview was really short, you should prepare for them to ask you things about why you want to study computing, why imperial and stuff about your personal statement. they will also ask you two technical questions."
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Had one a couple weeks ago. Mine was quite Cambridge-y, with almost entirely technical questions. To prepare for those, puzzle books are cool. Definitely prepare for PS questions and Why Computing in Imperial sort of thing, but your interview format is entirely at the hands of your interviewer.
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