Top 15 Uni doesn’t matter. Poor unis exist with rigerous engineering depts. all engineering courses are manageable if you’re motivated and work hard enough and make time to learn the content. For context. I went to a top 30 uk uni for BEng to a top 5 for Masters and found the top 30 far more challenging. Engineering is a great degree but only if you put effort in and easy to do then
"Top 15" is really wide margin. In any event I'd expect the workload to correlate to that of any other degree at that uni. However I'd expect that to be different from a "top 3" uni to "top 15-10" uni. Also as noted above, quite a few of those "top 15" unis may have specifically poorer than average engineering departments (UCL seems to be mentioned a lot in this regard - also from personal experience I can attest Exeter is in this category, which even some academics there agree with), and there may be other unis outside that which punch well above their weight for engineering (e.g. Loughborough and Strathclyde are very well regarded for engineering I gather). Try not to limit your perspective too much in that regard.
Beyond that, it's a degree so the conceptual difficulty will be somewhat higher, and unlike at A-level you won't be "spoon fed" the material - you'll have lectures giving you the basic outline and/or going through some examples but you'll be expected to do the bulk of the learning and practicing outside of lectures in your independent study time. This is true of any degree - undergraduate study is just different to A-level study.
However engineering is much less conceptually difficult than other degree subjects though, in my opinion. Compared to say, maths or philosophy or linguistics, it's pretty concrete and easy to practice worked examples in. There isn't much abstract material that can be hard to grasp - it's just a case of grinding through stuff and practicing to make sure you understand. So that may make it easier to initially approach material, at least, for a wider range of students. Of course equally it does mean you may just need to spend more time doing practice problems etc to "drill" the material in.
Beyond that, it's a degree so the conceptual difficulty will be somewhat higher, and unlike at A-level you won't be "spoon fed" the material - you'll have lectures giving you the basic outline and/or going through some examples but you'll be expected to do the bulk of the learning and practicing outside of lectures in your independent study time. This is true of any degree - undergraduate study is just different to A-level study.
However engineering is much less conceptually difficult than other degree subjects though, in my opinion. Compared to say, maths or philosophy or linguistics, it's pretty concrete and easy to practice worked examples in. There isn't much abstract material that can be hard to grasp - it's just a case of grinding through stuff and practicing to make sure you understand. So that may make it easier to initially approach material, at least, for a wider range of students. Of course equally it does mean you may just need to spend more time doing practice problems etc to "drill" the material in.
(edited 4 months ago)
Original post by JamieInit
For context I do maths and physics and I’m at an A/A* level for both. I’m about average IQ I’d say. Compared to A level physics and maths, how much does the difficulty increase? Also how bad is the workload?
It'll be no walk in the park, but not necessarily any more arduous than other degrees offered by the university, whether it be maths, chemistry, economics, law, history, linguistics, etc.
Original post by JamieInit
For context I do maths and physics and I’m at an A/A* level for both. I’m about average IQ I’d say. Compared to A level physics and maths, how much does the difficulty increase? Also how bad is the workload?
There are no top unis for Engineering - in fact non-RG courses are often better and more industry focused. A year in industry is important ..
It’s not that engineering is exceptionally challenging. The two things I think are important are:
- adapting to learning more independently (from what ive seen i think this is something students from selective schools tend to struggle much more with when they arrive at university)
- adjustment to new subjects: often here thermofluids is a common hurdle, its not that its excessively challenging but it is a lot of new concepts to get your head around
Workload in first year really isn’t too bad it has highs and lows, exam periods are very intense (to be expected) but the rest of term is generally very manageable.
- adapting to learning more independently (from what ive seen i think this is something students from selective schools tend to struggle much more with when they arrive at university)
- adjustment to new subjects: often here thermofluids is a common hurdle, its not that its excessively challenging but it is a lot of new concepts to get your head around
Workload in first year really isn’t too bad it has highs and lows, exam periods are very intense (to be expected) but the rest of term is generally very manageable.
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