Adrian - Engineering

Name: Adrian Wallis
Subject: Engineering
Year: 1st
A-levels taken: Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Economics


What does your working week entail?


 Weeks for Engineers are usually much more structured compared to
 arty subjects, and you’ll almost certainly be up most weekdays for
 9 o’clock. In the first year you’ll generally have around 10
 hour-long lectures a week for a variety of courses. Around three
 days a week you’ll have lab sessions, which could involve fiddling
 about with electrical things, or technical drawing, or learning
 C++, or a number of other experiments you’ll hopefully find
 interesting. It might sound like a lot, but you will almost never
 have anything scheduled for the afternoon, and you may even find
 the workload outside lectures to be a little less than other
 subjects. Every lecture course has a series of examples papers
 which contain questions for you to go through in your own time
 after the lectures. You’ll go through these questions with your
 Supervisors in one of the two supervisions you have a week. Essay
 writing is kept to a minimum, but you will have to write up lab
 reports for a few of the experiments you carry out.


 How easy was the transition from A-levels to the first year of
 your degree?


 I found that with a fairly good grounding in maths and physics the
 transition was fairly easy. The lectures begin at a reasonably low
 level to ensure even that if you haven’t done something before you can
 keep up. I hadn’t done anything about electrical circuits at
 A-level, but found the course to be fine with a little extra work.
 As well as this, the first term’s maths lectures ran in two
 sessions, a slower one with an extra lecture a week for people who
 haven’t done further maths, and a faster one for others.


 How easily can you fit social activities into your working week?


  As I explained earlier you will generally be able to plan your own
  time in the afternoons and at weekends; this leaves you free to
  take part in pretty much any social activity you like. The rugby
  team would be good choice. [Or the football team... ed.]


What sort of things did you talk about in your interview?

Both subject interviews I had were, after a couple of introductory
questions from my personal statement, generally fixated around working
through math questions with the interviewer; some were pure math, others
had an engineering slant, such as a question about aircraft wings or
pressure in dams, but the interview was very informal and if I didn’t
understand something the interviewer guided me through the question with
helpful suggestions. I then had a general interview where we discussed
more about why I chose Engineering and some extra-curricular bits and
pieces I put on my personal statement.