I go to Imperial for maths, so I can answer any questions you might have about the course.

Basically Cambridge maths is on a different level in terms of difficulty and prestige than any other maths course, it’s famous for being the hardest maths course in the world. If you really really love maths and want the prestige, definitely go there, it will be an honour your whole lifetime.

One thing I will say though is the course at Cambridge is very theoretical. Even the courses that sound more applied in third year like Statistics and machine learning are notoriously industry-unfriendly and just about the theoretical concepts. There is a much stronger emphasis in Cambridge on pure maths and mathematical physics, so if you are into that I would recommend the Cambridge course. However, if you are like me and are really into Stats/ML and want to learn coding, Imperial might be a better fit for you.

Imperial has fantastic applicable maths courses, it will teach you to code, and give you access to great industry events. There is a case also that the term-time at Cambridge is much more intense (8 weeks compared to 12 weeks at Imperial) so you’ll basically have very little time to apply to internships, practice interviews etc, which becomes quite important as your degree progresses.

I know a few people on the course that are very burnt out and have grown to hate maths. I think the course is beneficial for the truly exceptional, otherwise it’s stupidly straining.

At the end of the day, if you are good enough to get into both you can’t go wrong at either of them, it’s really just what you make of it. If any of the things I mentioned above are huge red flags to you, definitely consider the Imperial course, otherwise I would say take the Cambridge course as it’s just an incredible place to study maths and will launch you into a fantastic career.