Imperial College Business School

London, UK · Public · 1-year full-time MBA (September start, South Kensington)

Average GMAT Focus: 615
Class size: 75 (Class of 2026)
Program tuition: £103,113 (full program (2026 entry))

Deadlines

Round 1 (September 2027 intake): Sept. 22, 2026
Round 2 (September 2027 intake): Jan. 12, 2027
Round 3 (September 2027 intake): March 16, 2027
Round 4 (September 2027 intake): May 11, 2027

Essays

Essay 1 (2,500 characters, including spaces)

How do you expect the MBA programme to impact your career in both the short term and long term? Please detail your immediate career goals (including the company or sector) upon graduation and your broader aspirations for the future, explaining how the skills, network, and experiences gained from the MBA programme will help you achieve these objectives.

Essay 2 (3,500 characters, including spaces)

Why do you want to study at Imperial Business School and how will you contribute to our community?

Essay 3 (3,500 characters, including spaces)

Imperial’s values are Respect, Collaboration, Integrity, Innovation, and Excellence. Describe a time where you embodied one, or more, of these values and explain the impact it had.

Editor's notes

Round 1 closed Sept. 22, so Round 2 (Jan. 12, 2027) is your target. Imperial says scholarship money goes out in every round, but the big awards take extra work: the Advisory Board, Dean's Impact and Reaching Out awards each involve a video assessment. Leave time for that after you submit.
The essays run on characters, not words: 2,500 for your career plan, 3,500 each for the other two. That's about 400 and 550 words. Draft in a tool that counts characters with spaces, because the application will.
Read the class before you write the goals. The Class of 2026 is 72% from Asia-Pacific, and the Class of 2025 went 73% into UK jobs and 35% into tech. If you want to stay in London, Essay 1 should make that plan specific enough to believe.
Check the test rules early. The GMAT Focus minimum is 555 and the GRE needs 156 Verbal and 158 Quant. If you hold CFA Level 2 or 3, Imperial wants the waiver request before you submit, and an application with neither a score nor a waiver won't be processed.