Dear Annie Wei,

Thank you for your interest in admissions to Imperial College. Information about all Imperial College courses can be found on the College’s website. This includes full details of the entry requirements and selection process as well as contact details for admissions enquiries.

Imperial College publishes undergraduate admissions statistics for the past 5 completed admissions cycles. These include:

• Number of applicants, offers and places confirmed
• Average BMAT Scores
• Details of A level, IB and STEP Offers Made
• New Entrants' Achieved A level and IB Grades
• Admissions Rate by Nationality
• Number of applicants, offers and places confirmed by gender
• Number of interviews conducted

The published information can be accessed at the transparency pages of our website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/apply... (scroll to the bottom of the page to the link “Download the Undergraduate Admission Statistics”).

Information is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (Section 21) if it is already reasonably accessible to the requester. The published figures are updated annually; information that is intended for future publication is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act by virtue of Section 22 of the Act.

The College is not able to extract details of the A Levels subjects that applicants are studying or details of their predicted grades from our admissions database. The Freedom of Information Act created a right to access information to enable scrutiny of public authorities in the public interest. Section 14(1) of the Act aims to protect public authorities by allowing them to refuse any requests which have the potential to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption and are therefore deemed vexatious. While we appreciate that your request was made in good faith and was not intended to cause disruption, we are entitled to consider whether a request has a value or serious purpose in terms of the objective public interest in the information sought and to weigh that against the burden that would be placed on the organisation by having to produce that information. The public interest being the public good, not what is of interest to groups of or individual members of the public. The College’s view is that any legitimate public interest in admissions figures to our undergraduate programmes is met by the information already in the public domain set out above and in the detailed information for applicants also on our website. We are therefore refusing this request in reliance on Section 14 of the Act.

Yours,

Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London 

Please note that if you are unhappy with the way that we have handled your request, you can ask us to conduct a review. Please make your representation in writing within 2 months of the date you received this response. If you remain dissatisfied with how Imperial College has handled your request, you may then approach the Information Commissioner’s Office.   

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