Question about the Fast Stream final stage

So essentially the two fast streams I’m currently in the running for are Science & Engineering, and Generalist (STEM). I’ve had my first assessment centre and thankfully passed, but for Science & Engineering, I have to do a second, final assessment board which, to be honest, sounds really difficult.

What I’m wondering is, whether anyone knows that if seeing that Generalist (STEM) doesn’t have this final stage assessment, if I’m not successful at the final stage of Science & Engineering, if I’d still be offered a place as a Generalist? Does anyone have any experience with this?

I’d emailed about it but their response wasn’t very clear

Hi, this is the only thread I can see that is directly related to the science and engineering stream this year! I am wondering if the science and engineering final selection board tasks (the written and oral) are at all based on the scientific discipline you've done! For someone who has done engineering, it would seem a massive disadvantge to then give them something health/ earth sciences based.......and vice versa/...... does anyone know if the tasks are at all based on you expertise?

From what I gather for the briefing part, what you write is supposed to be accessible to anyone, not just those with a scientific background. I would assume therefore that the scenario we’ll have to write our briefing for will be very broad and with many different approaches as answers, kind of like the written task at the assessment centre I guess.

Do you have any idea as to whether for the interview part it will mostly be broad, personality-type questions, or more specific, technical questions? I’m kind of concerned about the lack of information we’ve been given to be honest. I may send an email.

I'm in the same boat- it feels like the information we've been given regarding the FSB interview section is very broad. Obviously they can't give us specific things to focus on for the kind of questions we'll be asked, but it would be good to know if I should be developing answers to more 'personal' questions, or brushing up on my technical knowledge, or a combination of both. Did you end up sending them an email?

That’s about as informative as I expected them to be! Thanks so much for letting me know, it’s understandable to an extent but also very frustrating. Did you find that the interview actually ended up being in line with what they said?

I had my FSB yesterday, and yeah, it basically was, it was essentially all kind of ‘tell me about a time you did this’ or ‘what would you do if’ questions - there were no kind of ‘technical’ subject specific ones.

Yeah, that makes sense I suppose seeing as we're coming from pretty different science and engineering backgrounds! I hope it went well for you and good luck if you haven't already heard back

Thanks! I think the written went well but I definitely screwed up a couple of the interview questions so we shall see. Do you happen to have any idea of when we might hear back? I forgot to ask…

I’m sure it went much better than you think! At least there’s a few stages to the FSB so you have the opportunity to raise your score if you don’t do as well in another section, but honestly it always goes a lot better than you think it did at the time.

I think the general timeframe I’ve seen to hear back has been around 1-2 weeks. I don’t have my FSB until May 3rd (terrified 🥲) so they might wait until all FSBs are over before giving anybody feedback, meaning you will most likely hear back by the end of next week or the week after at the latest. I’ll ask in my FSB and can get back to you if you haven’t already heard back by then.

Yeah, one to two weeks sounds about right. Best of luck for yours!

Thank you! I asked in mine and they said we can expect to hear back by the end of May but hopefully it won’t be as long a wait as that

Oh okay, thanks for letting me know, that’s quite a while but never mind, I will try my very best to not let the waiting drive me insane.

How do you think it went?

I’m hoping end of May is an “at the absolute latest” sort of situation- I’m not aware of anybody having their FSB for S&E later than tomorrow so if that’s actually the case we might get our results sooner rather than later.

I think it went okay! The time flew in for the written and I definitely rambled a lot during the interview and didn’t say like half of what I’d prepared but I’m hoping I was able to get the right points across anyway 🥲 I found the interview questions a bit stressful but nothing super surprising!

I’m hoping end of May is an “at the absolute latest” sort of situation- I’m not aware of anybody having their FSB for S&E later than tomorrow so if that’s actually the case we might get our results sooner rather than later.

I think it went okay! The time flew in for the written and I definitely rambled a lot during the interview and didn’t say like half of what I’d prepared but I’m hoping I was able to get the right points across anyway 🥲 I found the interview questions a bit stressful but nothing super surprising!

Yeah 90 minutes for the written was definitely tight. Glad to hear it went quite well though!

Anyone heard anything yet? It's taking so long!