Hah! No, the reason I'd say against Imperial isn't the college itself (but even then, is still third on the list of Oxbridge and), it's similar to why I'm not tripping over smart people here in Berlin: fantastic public transit means the smart people aren't all squished together.

Town and gown, massive town. Diluted organisational opportunity, less room for serendipity in meeting fellow nerds of whatever topic of interest.

That said, I do not know the social organisational structures of much of the USA, so it's plausible that this reasoning doesn't work because the USA has the same spread-out-ness from all the cars, or perhaps everyone in both just knows how to find the nerdy and geeky Schelling points…

But (Old) Cambridge? Geeking opportunities are as densely packed in Cambridge as archeology is within 2km of the Parthenon in Athens. Oxford certainly looks similar to Cambridge in this regard. At least, when I visited, as a tourist, given I didn't live in Oxford at any point.

With the caveat that I have degrees from Oxford and Cambridge but not Imperial

> but even then, is still third on the list of Oxbridge

Is this still true? Any ranking I’ve seen recently generally has it right up there. It feels like it’s a name recognition thing rather than quality meter at this point, like Caltech vs MIT.

Your points about geography are well taken though.