Bristol Or Imperial?

so you have offers for one course?

The Imperial course sounds amazing - being taught by the person who founded Dyson!

Congratulations on getting offers from both.

Thank you! Its true though i'm concerned about student life and being in London! Are you applying?

Thank you! Its true though i'm concerned about student life and being in London! Are you applying?

I'm applying for politics, so not to Imperial; I've applied to UCL and LSE. Student life and being in London do concern me, but on the other hand, I quite like the thought of not being too far from home.

But my friend, like you, has offers for design engineering at Imperial and Bristol - she's chosen Imperial because the course is so incredible. For STEM, I don't think you can beat Imperial.

the student loan amount is higher in london than outside of london. However
imperial halls are more expensive if you want to live close to the campus £229 a week for single ensuite or approx £150 for a shared room with ensuite

The price i'm not too worried about, as I live 40 mins away so at worst can live at home. Also the bursary is amazing!

How much

I have offers from Bristol Engineering Design and from Imperial Design Engineering. I know they are very different courses and ultimately would be happy on either on them but don't know which to choose!

Bristol:
Great Student life eg societies
year in industry
small classes (30)
away from London (live there)
open course - v general
lower entry requirements (AABB or A*AA)

Imperial:
International name (I wanna work all over)
Dream (basically) degree
Great Bursary
has no graduates yet so relatively risky
great learning difficulty support
High entry requirement than usual (must have ****ed up cos A*A*A instead of one A*)

I have offers from Bristol Engineering Design and from Imperial Design Engineering. I know they are very different courses and ultimately would be happy on either on them but don't know which to choose!

Bristol:
Great Student life eg societies
year in industry
small classes (30)
away from London (live there)
open course - v general
lower entry requirements (AABB or A*AA)

Imperial:
International name (I wanna work all over)
Dream (basically) degree
Great Bursary
has no graduates yet so relatively risky
great learning difficulty support
High entry requirement than usual (must have ****ed up cos A*A*A instead of one A*)

There are also less jobs available for design engineering relative to the mainstream engineering jobs e.g. civil engineer, mechanical engineer.

A design engineering course is less conventional than traditional engineering degrees. There are also less jobs available for design engineering relative to the mainstream engineering jobs e.g. civil engineer, mechanical engineer. A lot of design engineering students instead have aspirations to form the next great start-up and if you're in London, there's ample opportunity to network and get into a good position.

I'm a current student at Imperial and I haven't heard of any teething problems for the course yet but as you have mentioned, there have not been a graduating class yet.

If you're in line to potentially get a generous bursary, then there's really not reason for you not to choose Imperial in my opinion.

Overall, I would vote for Imperial as you may regret not choosing it if you decided on Bristol.

I would look more at the courses, if you say they are very different. From my experience of working in design engineering, I would say some key skills are:

CAD - the software used to model designs. It's certainly useful if you are at least fairly proficient with a particular package.
Drawings - drawings are how designs are communicated from one engineering to another, and from the design engineer to manufacturing/production/construction. From what I have seen, it is mainly draughtsmen that produce them, but as an engineer you need to be able to read them to ensure they are correct and communicate the correct information.
Practical knowledge - design engineers need to have a good understanding of what is practically achievable using the materials and manufacturing/construction processes available.
Visual-spatial skills - when you design something, you have to lay things out in 3D space in a way such that they fit together, do not clash, all the bits and bobs that need to be accessible are, that it is safe, etc. Being able to visualise this in your mind is important.

I would be interested in courses that seek to develop these skills, alongside other important engineering ones.



A lot of those jobs are actually design jobs, though. Design is a huge part of engineering.

Ah, that's good, I would be really interested in doing start ups - thank you, I hadn't considered that. And that's good, if you feel that the course is going well and I suppose that if something should happen to the graduates, they have 2/3 years to fix it before me...

Can I ask how happy you are outside of class? Do you feel like you have a the right amount of social life etc?

Yeah, the Imperial does seem to have a heavy emphasis on those areas! Would you consider people skills to be important? As well as Environmental and business impacts and a experience in industry? Because this is Bristol's emphasis.

I have offers from Bristol Engineering Design and from Imperial Design Engineering. I know they are very different courses and ultimately would be happy on either on them but don't know which to choose!

Bristol:
Great Student life eg societies
year in industry
small classes (30)
away from London (live there)
open course - v general
lower entry requirements (AABB or A*AA)

Imperial:
International name (I wanna work all over)
Dream (basically) degree
Great Bursary
has no graduates yet so relatively risky
great learning difficulty support
High entry requirement than usual (must have ****ed up cos A*A*A instead of one A*)

I think your question boils down to "What is the workload like at Imperial?".

There's no doubt the the quantity and difficulty of the work is challenging, simply because the university is a well-established one offering traditional courses. However, the key thing I would say is that if you are capable of attaining an offer and then subsequently achieving the grades, you definitely have the potential to cope.

If you are an average student (by Imperial's standards) and spend ~15 hours per week outside of lectures self-studying (bear in mind that there are only ~20 scheduled hours of contact time), then you should get at least a 2:1. Of course, there are some weeks when you have coursework deadlines and all plans are thrown out the window.

Basically, if you are a decent enough student, you'll fine the workload manageable as long as you put a little bit of effort in and still have time to do whatever else you want.

People skills are vital in engineering. As is understanding how your work or designs impact the business, because unless you end up performing academic research in a university, it's very likely you will end up in an organisation that ultimately has to make a profit, that has to secure orders or contracts in a competitive marketplace via ensuring your products or solutions meet the requirements of the client and are of sufficient quality and value. Not just focusing on the end result, but ensuring how you arrive at it is efficient. I used to work for an organisation that wasted millions of pounds annually because their internal processes and procedures, how they operated, just wasn't very efficient.

Experience in industry is also extremely useful, for a few reasons. Firstly, with a bit of industrial experience on your CV it'll really help you stand out amongst other graduates, who might not have any (or you may not even need to worry about standing out as the organisation that you do your work experience with may offer you a position upon graduation). Secondly, you will learn more about engineering in industry. University really doesn't give you much of a flavour of what it's like being an engineer in industry. But if you get some industrial experience, it'll give you a taster to what being an engineer in industry is really like.