Hi all,

I’m a new poster here, although not new to the site…..generally find the answer to most my student related queries here, but not yet this one specifically, so thought I’d raise the point myself! A bit of background:

I’m a “mature” student (i.e. 27!), at the end of my second year of a BEng in Motorsport Engineering. When I started nearly 3 years ago (as I was on the Engineering Foundation year), all prospective Motorsport Engineering students were told that the course was in the process of being accredited by the IMechE and therefore not to worry; so I took their word for it. This hasn’t yet happened and I have now lost all faith! CEng is important to me, (as I’m sure it is for most all future engineers), so I have decided to jump ship “late in the day”, so to speak, and transfer to the Mechanical Engineering degree, which has been accredited for years. This apparently has never happened before at my Uni, however, it has been deemed by the course leaders as possible, subject to me taking an extra 30 level 2 credits alongside my third year modules next year. This has been arranged on the basis that I have performed very well as a student up until now and could in theory cope with the extra study. Another positive is that some of the material in the extra level 2 Mechanical modules has been covered to a lesser extent during some of my level 2 Motorsport modules, so I should be able to grasp the material easier. That being said, it is still extra work, however luckily, there are no coursework components associated with these modules! I’m aware that I’m going to need to plan my time well, and in fact, this is one thing I am quite good at, what with having a wife and two kids to juggle with my studies too! With this in mind, I’m trying to plan ahead a little, as due to my family commitments, and my wife also starting her first year on a Social Work degree, I’m not going to have endless amounts of time to study…..25-30 hours a week independent study time is what I have to play with, making it a 40-45 hour working week in total.

Ok, enough waffle…..I was basically after some advice from other students that may have experience of taking 150 credits in a year as opposed to the standard 120, especially in 3rd year, which would be busy without the extra work! Has this been do-able for you guys? What kind of study time were you putting in? Is 25-30 hours enough from your experiences?

Thanks