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Year 12 engineering personal statement opportunities

Hi I am a year 12 student who is interested in engineering at university. What engineering-related activities can I do that I can put on my personal statement? After searching google, i only found out about the engineering education scheme which my school does not take part in. So is there anything else I could do?

I am more interested in electrical/electronic engineering than the other types.
take online courses
Reply 2
Original post by hoping4Astars
Hi I am a year 12 student who is interested in engineering at university. What engineering-related activities can I do that I can put on my personal statement? After searching google, i only found out about the engineering education scheme which my school does not take part in. So is there anything else I could do?

I am more interested in electrical/electronic engineering than the other types.


Have you applied for a headstart course?
hey, i know nothing about engineering but i know some other general stuff! look at summer schools offered by universities in your summer holiday, like uniq or sutton trust! essay competitions are also offered by unis, not just for arts and humanities subjects but for the sciences too.

on my PS (for english but i assure you i will only tell you stuff that might be useful to you!) i put:
cambridge essay competition
oxford summer school
independent reading and my reflections on it
EPQ is a good one! on a relevant subject


any other competition, clubs, even stuff thats not directly relevant but you can try to link? if i think of anything else ill post again!
Original post by EmergencyBagels
hey, i know nothing about engineering but i know some other general stuff! look at summer schools offered by universities in your summer holiday, like uniq or sutton trust! essay competitions are also offered by unis, not just for arts and humanities subjects but for the sciences too.

on my PS (for english but i assure you i will only tell you stuff that might be useful to you!) i put:
cambridge essay competition
oxford summer school
independent reading and my reflections on it
EPQ is a good one! on a relevant subject


any other competition, clubs, even stuff thats not directly relevant but you can try to link? if i think of anything else ill post again!


EDIT: i dont mean look for the summer schools in your summer holiday I mean! i mean look for them now! they will take place in your summer holiday.

aaalso might work experience be possible for engineering? thatd be hard though since you do need connections. other stuff i suggested may be better since its fairly accessible no matter who you know or where you live. the summer school is great since its totally free - you literally dont have to pay for anything! they cover travel and books and food! awesome stuff.
(edited 8 years ago)
Get an arduino starter kit, learn about PID control, Laplace and Fourier.

If I had done those relatively small things before starting my engineering degree I would have been miles ahead and it would look good on a personal statement.
Hi, I'm a year 13 student and I've applied for electrical and electronic engineering and received all offers from the unis i applied to so I'll try my best to tell you what I did. If you're set on electronic and electrical engineering, I'd strongly suggest buying an Arduino Uno microcontroller and doing some small but interesting projects on them. It gives you a head-start on programming and shows wider interest. Engineering related work experience may be helpful but its really not essential and none of the unis expressed much interest in my one week work experience with an engineering firm. I would strongly suggest going to taster days / masterclasses / university lectures as not only did it help strengthen my interest in the subject on my PS, but it really confirmed to me that I wanted to study engineering (its very difficult to know otherwise as you've never really been taught it before).

I'm also carrying out an EPQ (not all schools offer it) on the future of electronics but this is a seriously big commitment and it's not for the light-hearted, I'm kind of thinking now that there were easier ways to express wider interest, so although I'm not advising you against the EPQ, make sure you know what it will take to do it and that there are plenty of other ways to strengthen your application. The higher standard of unis tend to care mostly about your grades so be sure to work your hardest in AS levels as grades are more important than anything else in my opinion. Don't do what I did and stress that you haven't done enough compared to others applying for the subject such as summer schools and taking part in engineering competitions. Although those things do look really good, as long as you show you have a strong academic ability and you can fill your PS with lots of examples about what you've done in your own time to express your interest then you have as good a chance as anyone else with getting into a good uni. Universities are looking for 1) academic ability and 2) enthusiasm to work hard and achieve in the subject. Bare in mind others may disagree and have their own perspective on the matter but this is what I can give you from my personal experience.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any more questions.
If you live near or in London. The university of London website is a good place to check out. The London Unis do lots of taster courses which are free, Kings, UCL and Queen Mary I know do loads.
Queen Mary do engineering taster courses and they also got free lunch! (Which was a bonus) I did 3 taster courses for physics at Queen Mary as well as a summer school (All physics) and they were all really good. UCAS has a bit on the form that asks you if you have done taster courses so that will be a good thing to do but you can mention them in your personal statement.

But you need to apply now if you want to do many of these as they are very popular! Feel free to message me if you have any other questions
Original post by Helloworld_95
Get an arduino starter kit, learn about PID control, Laplace and Fourier.

If I had done those relatively small things before starting my engineering degree I would have been miles ahead and it would look good on a personal statement.


Thats what I pretty much looked into before uni! (didnt look at Fourier though).

Yes I recommend getting an arduino kit too, pretty cheap and it will teach you the basics of electronics and programming. Stuff like laplace are used a lot in engineering and khanacademy has about 4 videos on it. It's not that hard if your integration is good, just need to know what it is, and how to use it to solve second order differential equations (no need to do any extra hard stuff), not only will the university be impressed but it will help you like @Helloworld_95 said. It'll give you a jump start in a lot of things too.

Forget doing any paid summer courses, unless if its summer school (they're fun and they also give you a taste of what engineering is like).
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Makadia
Have you applied for a headstart course?


No. They're too expensive
Concerning work experience: You can ask the really small companies for a small intership or try to get a little job there. Then you can get a glimpse of the atmosphere and talk to engineers, learn about the products. Then there are some documentaries about technical stuff and how a product is developed. Read around which programs engineers are using.
Original post by Student403
take online courses


Where? Which website?
Original post by hoping4Astars
Where? Which website?


Coursera and Udacity are quite good, and if you can manage with something a bit more independent then MITx and NPTEL are worth looking into, they're both websites which upload modules from universities.

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