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How important is university choice for engineering?

Hi! I'm about to choose my a levels and I've come to the maths vs +further maths dilemma. It really depends on which Uni I want to go to. It looks like that if I want to a top russle group uni (top 6 ish engineering uni) then I would really need to do further maths. Otherwise I should be fine with regular maths. Assuming I still want to do engineering at the end of A levels I would be aiming for a top level engineering job (I.e not a mechanic type job, no disrespect to any mechanics). I wanted to know, how important is it that I go to a best of the best university (I.e. Imperial college London) to get a higher level engineering job, or is it just a load of bull and reputation made by the top unis to get people studying there?

Thanks!

Reply 1

Smack

Volunteer Team

It's more about the knowledge and skills you gain from your education, and how you can sell this to your future employer(s). A "top" university might have a harder course that covers more material that you're unlikely to use in industry... Where ever you go, you've got to try and get the most out of your education and try to develop skills that'll be useful for industry and not just passing exams.

Reply 2

PineapplePol

I emailed several unis about this as i really wanted to do advanced higher tech not applied maths (what further maths is called in Scotland) as my 3rd AH (with normal maths and physics of course). The only 2 that I emailed who gave a monkeys were Cambridge (most colleges, some didn't care) and Imperial and I decided i didn't want to go to either of those. The others said they didn't care.
Email the places you like the look of or ask at open days.

Reply 3

pleasedtobeatyou

There's definitely certain tiers of university but within that tier most of them are indistinguishable from the rest.

For example, see the number of modules for mechanical engineering at Imperial and Newcastle

https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/mechanicalengineering/Public/files/prog_spec_meng_me.pdf
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/h301/modules/

Newcastle
Year 1 - 7 modules
Year 2 - 9 modules

Imperial
Year 1 - 10 modules
Year 2 - 12 modules

The compound effect of this extra learning will really manifest itself after 4 years of study.

Reply 4

PineapplePol

That seems way too simplistic a way of looking at it. A "module" can mean anything a uni wants it to and contain any amount of info. All you can see there is that Imperial divides its course into smaller chunks. It's like saying a particular book is "better" because it has more chapters. (I hate books with long chapters though )