Imperial is regularly placed in the top three in the Times National University League Table along with Oxford and Cambridge. Imperial was placed 5th overall in the world in the 2008 THES - QS World University Rankings of universities worldwide,and 27th in the world by the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic ranking of world Universities.

Imperial's main campus is located in South Kensington in central London, on the boundary between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster, with its front entrance on Exhibition Road. Formerly a constituent college of the University of London, Imperial became independent of the university on 8 July 2007, the 100th anniversary of its founding.
Admissions
Imperial College London is selective. From 1999 to 2007 (dates of all the online available records), the overall acceptance rate of Imperial College programmes has been consistently below 20%,and in 2007, the acceptance rate of the college for undergraduates was 15.3%. The acceptance rate for postgraduate courses was 19.8%. To apply to an Imperial undergraduate course, as with all other universities in the United Kingdom, one must apply through the UCAS system.

Most of Imperial's courses require 3 A grades at A Level, including Mathematics. However a large number of the departments not only require an overall A grade in Mathematics, but at least 80% (A grade) in the 6 units which make up the A Level.

Imperial, along with University College, London and the University of Cambridge is one of the first universities in the UK to make use of the A* grade at A Level (coming into effect from 2010), with the Departments of Computing and Electrical and Electronic Engineering requiring A*AA for 2010 admission.. In addition, the university currently has the highest offer for any degree in the whole country, Mathematics and Computer Science requiring A*A*A in 2010.

Imperial College Admissions Test
From Autumn 2009 an entrance exam will be sat for applicants wishing to read all subjects (except medicine, for which Imperial require the BMAT examination to be taken). Consequently, this will determine those applicants who are to be interviewed and helps distinguish the brightest pupils. The test was announced in summer 2008 and is the only all-course university admissions test, after Oxford scrapped their exam in 1995