tl;dr: Don't waste your time with Arup in London if you are an international student. Some companies would reject you early on if you require a visa, which is fine. Then there are companies that take you all the way to the final step just to leave you hanging for months and then telling you they had to go with a Home candidate, Arup happened to be the latter. Anyway, I wanted to share my experience hoping that it would be helpful for those who will do interviews with Arup.
Back to the process: It started off great. I applied online, after a lengthy CV screening period, I was contacted for the phone interview, very relaxed with usual questions. You will make it through if you are a good overall fit for the role and have done your research on the firm and read through Ove Arup's speech. Couple of weeks went by and I got invited for the Assessment Day in London, things are still fine. The Assessment Day itself was relaxed and ok organised. You start off with a group exercise, don't panic if you've applied for a non-civil role and you get a construction project case, make sure you critically analyse the scope of the project like any other engineering development, get all the help you can from others in the group who come from civil engineering backgrounds and most importantly incorporate the values that they are looking for into your client proposals. You will then do an interview with 2 senior engineers with backgrounds similar to yours, the interview will take almost 2 hours so be prepared for that, it's still all good, it's tiring but that's how AC's are supposed to be. After that, you do a briefing, and all along you are sold this dream company that strives on a set of ethical values and that they value your time and you are feeling this is it! This is the one!
Then...you go home...and everything that you went through is gone. I did the assessment day on Thursday 21st of December. A month goes by, January 21st, no news, I contact the HR, they tell me that my application is "very much under consideration" and that they will be back to me with an update asap. Then...you guessed it, another month goes by, February 21st, like I know I'm not going to get the job, so I just contact the HR again to get that final answer. Now the problem is they don't reject you, they keep you waiting, they tell you that there has been difficulties but you are still very much under consideration. Then...yup, guessed it again, another month goes by, exactly 95 days after doing my assessment day, I contacted the HR, asking them for a feedback at least, then all I get after 95 days of being patient is a copy paste email just like the one you'd get on the first stage. I get a call afterwards, saying that they had to organise another assessment day, so that they could give Home candidates another chance. Anyway, As of now, it's been another month and I still haven't received that feedback too, and this whole experience has just turned hilarious, I honestly wonder if it can get any worse and I doubt that.
Arup is a good company, talented people working on large scale projects, but it will disappoint you if you expect the same clockwork interview process that you've had with large public companies. I hope they won't do this to other candidates in the future, because it's simply not fair.