External project selection#
Important
This page was for 2024/25 academic year and is archived for reference. The deadlines and procedures described here have expired and may change for future academic years.
Important
We treat all external projects as confidential. To access the list of available external projects, you must be logged in with your Imperial College London account:
If you want to apply for an external project, please fill out the following form:
https://forms.office.com/e/H1fKE8EBd6
Please enter up to 4 external project codes (e.g.
abcd-001orxyzw-122).Your choices are not ranked in order of preference.
Warning
The deadline to submit your external projects selection is 3 March 2025, 10:00 GMT.
Tip
We strongly advise all students to have their CVs and motivation letters ready to be sent to the main supervisor if they are shortlisted. We will ask you to apply within a few days after the selection deadline. This is your application and the chance to stand out, so it is up to you how you want to tailor it.
If you have already submitted the selection form and want to make changes, fill it out again - we will consider only your most recent submission. Submitting the form earlier will not increase your chances of being shortlisted - please take your time and make an informed decision. Submissions after the deadline will not be accepted.
Important
All questions regarding the external project, such as the work location, whether the position is paid, and others, must be discussed directly between the student and the main supervisor/company during the application stage (and after shortlisting) so the student can make an informed decision if they are given an offer. If there is anything you would like to know about the project before applying, there is a contact email for each project. The contact will attempt to get the answer where possible.
Warning
Although the IRP Team does its best to shortlist as many students as possible, that is often impossible. Therefore, we strongly encourage all students to find the main supervisor themselves and propose a project (see {doc}archive/project-proposal).
Allocation procedure#
Supervisors submit project offers (see archive/call-for-projects, deadline usually in early February). If the main supervisor is not affiliated with Imperial College London, we classify the project as external.
Projects are advertised to students (usually mid-February 2025).
Students submit project selections. Each student submits up to 4 external projects (deadline 3 March 2025, 10:00 GMT).
We shortlist students on each external project based on their current ECTS-weighted mean marks.
We contact shortlisted candidates asking them to apply directly to the main supervisor by sending their CVs and motivation letters. Similary, we let the main supervisors know whose applications they can expect. We only share student’s name, email, and their course with external supervisors.
The main supervisor considers (and interviews) candidates and groups them into two categories: (i) unsuccessful and (ii) successful. The successful candidates are ranked. We expect to receive all external project decisions before 7 April 2025, 10:00 BST.
We let the unsuccessful candidates know and ask successful ones, in the ranked order, to accept or decline the offer. The student has a maximum of 2 working days to accept or decline the offer. If the student accepts the offer, the IRP Team allocates the student to that project. If the student declines the offer or misses the deadline, the project is offered to the next student on the list of successful candidates. We do not email declines or offers to students before the 7 April deadline.
Since a student can receive multiple offers from different external supervisors, we strongly encourage external supervisors to select multiple candidates as successful whenever possible.
Warning
The IRP Team reserves the right to adapt or revise the outlined procedures as necessary.