Dear Tsz Yeung Chui,

Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request.

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”). 

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 the elements of your request not covered by the published information 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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Dear Tsz Yeung Chui,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to review the College’s response to your Freedom of Information Act request.

Your request asked, for the past 5 completed UCAS admissions cycles, the number of applicants holding achieved grades (instead of predicted grades) that applied for undergraduate courses at Imperial College London, and the number of offers made amongst them, listed by course name.

In your Internal Review request you have referred to an FOI response relating to medicine applicants dated 2014. That request asked for information about achieved A levels for deferred entry offer holders (not applicants) for a particular programme in one year. It is not really comparable to providing the information you have requested about applicants for all programmes over a five-year period. In any event, we have changed our approach to responding to Freedom of Information Act since 2014.

You have said that the College already publishes some admissions statistics on the transparency pages and that it would be possible to just single-out the applicants with achieved grades and create a similar spreadsheet for those applicants only. The published statistics take considerable time to compile and prepare. It would be possible, but burdensome, for us to produce equivalent information on applicants who had already taken A Levels for the sole purpose of responding to your request. We have said that a request can be regarded as vexatious even if made in good faith if it is unreasonably burdensome when balanced against the public interest in the information. In this case there is no apparent public interest. You have not stated what the public interest in the information might be nor what use it could be to you or anyone else. As explained previously, the public interest is the public good, not what is of interest to an individual member of the public. We are therefore maintaining that Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act applies to your request. If you are unhappy with the outcome of my review of your request, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yours,

Access to Information Manager
Central Secretariat
Imperial College London

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