Imperial College London Interview

Date: 18th March 2009

Venue: Traders Hotel, KLCC

Time: 10.40am

Let’s start with the not-so-fun part.

I figured out that it is very uncommon for Imperial College to come down to Malaysia to conduct interviews for their international students selection. But this year, due to the large amount of applicants from Malaysia and Singapore for CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 2009/2010, Imperial broke tradition.

So now is the fun part.

This morning, I left home at 9am hoping to arrive in Traders Hotel at 10am. The public transportation was very efficient and I got to the Pasar Seni LRT at about 9.50am. Brilliant!

The LRT trip from Pasar Seni to KLCC didn’t take long and I arrived in KLCC at 10.15am. It was a long walk from the underground station to KLCC to KL Convention Centre to Traders Hotel.

I arrived at Traders Hotel Lobby at 10.31am. Took the lift up and arrived at the designated venue at 10.35am. Phew.

Managed to catch some conversation with a few students from Kolej Tuanku Jaafar, the college that I was about to apply into after SPM were I not accepted by Sri KDU back in 2006.

They are quite a brilliant bunch. Almost all of them already hold an offer from Cambridge. I was really amazed.

I was praying the whole night so that there wouldn’t be a technical interview. A technical interview means an interview where they just throw a maths or physics question at you expecting you to show some deep level of intellectual analysis, just like the Oxford interview last year. Praise God that there weren’t any technical questions asked.

The interview went well. In fact, I managed to adjust my tie before Dr Spelt opened the door and greeted me. =) Dr Spelt is currently the Admissions Tutor in Imperial and he was my interviewer. Yes, I understood his British accent (a personal achievement). He asked me about my personal statement and my IB score since I already got my final results.

I elaborated a little about my passion in chemistry and the step of faith that I took when I applied for Chemical Engineering. I also spoke about my interest in environmental issues such as global warming, and linked that with the Carbon Capture and Storage technology.

CCS is basically a technology where CO2 in the industries and atmosphere are being compressed at high pressure into liquid CO2 and stored into depleted oil fields and suitable sequesterian sites.

(I read about this an hour before I left home this morning. Also because Imperial is doing huge research on this. Bingo.)

Dr Spelt and I discussed about the technological challenges for this technology. Somewhat I also spoke about wastewater management. Imperial is also doing some research about separation techniques involving waste water. Bingo again!

That was one of the most enjoyable academic conversations I ever had.

When he asked me whether I had any questions for him about Imperial, I went slightly blank for a moment. Then, I remember about the questions I posed the other day during my phone interview with Princeton. So guess what? I RECYCLED THE SAME QUESTIONS!

When you’re blank, always ask these things:

1) Weather

2) Workload

3) Societies and Clubs.

4) Will I have a life?

After that, we were done. I shall know the results of my interview in a week’s time. Dr Spelt asked me a favour to respond to the offer as soon as possible once I have decided and have gotten my funding ready. Don’t wait for UCAS!

Another interview gunned down!