Arkwright Scholarships 2014!

Original post by UnicornFairy12

SO then, anyone else applying for the scholarship this year?
I'm just about to register myself.
Is there anyone here who already holds one by any chance? Any tips or pointers perhaps?

I'm a 2013 Arkwright Scholar. Do you have any questions?

I definitely recommend applying. The reason why I applied for the Scholarship was because of its prestige; I wanted something to put on my personal statement. However, there are lots of other advantages that I've found out about after receiving it. The £600 award is actually extremely useful; it's so wonderful to have a pot of money to invest in just your learning. I've used it mainly for various books that interest me, as well as a NewScientist subscription. Once you're an Arkwright scholar, you also get invited to tons of engineering 'theme days' and events, which is really awesome (and attending them obviously looks brilliant on your PS). The contact with an engineering institution is also really useful and could potentially lead to work experience.

Another thing that I should definitely mention is the fact that Arkwright scholars get their Headstart fee paid for them. Assuming you apply for Headstart in Year 12 (which you definitely should do!), this could save you up to £390. So in actual fact, all in all, the financial benefits of having an Arkwright Scholarship exceed £1000. Even though I'm not entirely sure I'm going to go into Engineering, the Scholarship has been and will be extremely useful.

Reply 3

OP

Original post by Chlorophile

I'm a 2013 Arkwright Scholar. Do you have any questions?

I definitely recommend applying. The reason why I applied for the Scholarship was because of its prestige; I wanted something to put on my personal statement. However, there are lots of other advantages that I've found out about after receiving it. The £600 award is actually extremely useful; it's so wonderful to have a pot of money to invest in just your learning. I've used it mainly for various books that interest me, as well as a NewScientist subscription. Once you're an Arkwright scholar, you also get invited to tons of engineering 'theme days' and events, which is really awesome (and attending them obviously looks brilliant on your PS). The contact with an engineering institution is also really useful and could potentially lead to work experience.

Another thing that I should definitely mention is the fact that Arkwright scholars get their Headstart fee paid for them. Assuming you apply for Headstart in Year 12 (which you definitely should do!), this could save you up to £390. So in actual fact, all in all, the financial benefits of having an Arkwright Scholarship exceed £1000. Even though I'm not entirely sure I'm going to go into Engineering, the Scholarship has been and will be extremely useful.

Thanks for all the helpful info! :smile:

The aptitude exam is on the coming Wednesday, and having not taken DT or resistant materials or something similar, the aptitude test seems daunting - it looks like it's very much orientated round that aspect of design. How would you suggest one should prepare for it?
Thanks!

Reply 4

Original post by UnicornFairy12

Thanks for all the helpful info! :smile:

The aptitude exam is on the coming Wednesday, and having not taken DT or resistant materials or something similar, the aptitude test seems daunting - it looks like it's very much orientated round that aspect of design. How would you suggest one should prepare for it?
Thanks!

I didn't take RM either (in fact, only 1 of the 3 successful applicants had taken it). It's really not necessary; they're looking for people who are able to come up with creative and practical ideas, not for a regurgitation of the RM syllabus. Arkwright does an excellent job of differentiating between people who are just good at DT as a school subject, and the people who are true engineers.

Having said that, there are definitely things you should go through. Looking through the previous Arkwright papers, here's a (definitely not exhaustive) list of things you could look into (this is mainly for Section 2).

•

Gears and other mechanical systems. There are been questions every year for (at least) the last three years where a good knowledge of gears and mechanisms has been useful, so this is probably one of the safest areas to revise. Obviously, you're not going to be expected to know a billion different types of gears, but I would definitely have a look at a few (maybe some less conventional ones for creativity), specifically in terms of power transmission. This website is bloody brilliant: http://507movements.com/

•

Materials and adhesives. 20% of your marks in Section 2 come from your choice of materials, so just learn the basic materials used in industry, their advantages and disadvantages, etc. You honestly don't need to do a lot here (from what I remember, I literally just learnt the names of 3 really strong glues) but you need to remember to include them in the exam, as well as justification.

•

Construction methods. Again, I didn't really do a lot here myself, but it's 40% of your marks in Section 2. Do have a look through industrial manufacturing processes, but I think the emphasis here is on your ability to think of logical and practical processes rather than learning industrial techniques off by heart. So basically, as long as you can show that your design is practical to make, you should be fine.

It's also really, really important to understand what Arkwright is looking for in each of the sections.

Section 1
This part is all about showing your creativity and your ability to use knowledge to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to relatively boring problems. You're being asked to produce three solutions, so they are definitely not meant to be particularly developed. If you look at the example answers, you'll see that each design typically consists of a couple of drawings and annotation, with a little explanation. The important bit is that you're really thinking about interesting ways to solve the problem. Last year, the task I chose for Question 1 was the task to design a device to prevent a pond freezing. If I remember correctly, one of my designs was basically a solar tower inspired by the prototypes in Spain and North Africa which heats a bomb which is periodically dropped into the bond to heat it during the night and then taken back up during the day, in which the solar energy is focused onto it. Obviously, it's a pretty ridiculous solution and not particularly practical, but the point is that it's creative and it shows not only a use of lots of outside principles, but also the fact that I've been inspired by a real world piece of engineering. Arkwright really love that: if you can show how your design has been inspired by something, be it a real life piece of engineering or something else, like nature (my design for Part 2 was inspired by the human shoulder), then that'll really make you shine.

Section 2
Section 2 is all about developing a design in detail and coming up with a really good engineering solution. I've mentioned quite a lot of stuff about Section 2 already, so I won't go on about it too much. The really important thing here is that you've got to think a lot. You're being marked on the quality of your proposal, so you need to show that you've put a lot of thought into every single aspect of it. This means that you need to talk about the materials, the construction process, the dimensions, the functionality, ergonomics, how it works, etc. Go into as much detail as you can - I used up 4 pages of A3 for Section 2. If you can consider things like the sustainability (if relevant), then that's excellent. Also, remember that engineering is a multidisciplinary field so if you can bring in aspects of other STEM subjects, that's amazing. Calculations always look great (an example of a question where you could do tons of brilliant maths is Q4, 2011). I wrote a program in pseudocode for my design to illustrate how it might word. Another really important point to make is that you need to make sure you come up with a complete solution. For instance, Q3 2013 was about designing a bicycle mount for a smartphone that also charged the phone (not particularly safe in my opinion but whatever). According to the examiner's reports, lots of pupils neglected to talk about the charging process (which incidentally is another great opportunity to talk about gears and to bring in some physics about the electromotive force) and therefore lost points. Don't fall into that trap!

Apart from general revision, do past papers. Ask whoever is responsible for Arkwright in your school to have a look through them and give their opinions, or you can scan them and I'll be very happy to have a look and give feedback. Also, read the Marker's Comments. I seriously cannot stress enough how important this is.

A last thing (I know I've gone on a bit/lot): enjoy the exam! The entire reason why I applied for Arkwright was because the exam looked really fun, and it was. Contrary to DT in school, Arkwright actually gives you an opportunity to be creative, which I relished and I'm sure you will too.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 5

blayneandkert

Original post by UnicornFairy12

Thanks for all the helpful info! :smile:

The aptitude exam is on the coming Wednesday, and having not taken DT or resistant materials or something similar, the aptitude test seems daunting - it looks like it's very much orientated round that aspect of design. How would you suggest one should prepare for it?
Thanks!

How did you find it??

Reply 6

a_quiet_person

1

I also did questions 1 and 3, found the second part much harder.
After looking at past papers it seems like this year's questions were much more vague. Feeling hopeful though.
Any idea when the results come out?

Reply 7

a_quiet_person

1

Yeah, the main part of my question 3 was using a computer (I did show some code), so there wasn't really much I could say about construction. I think my question 1 will have to carry me through.
How long did it take you? I was writing until they asked us to stop, but the three other people from my school doing it were finished after 60-90 minutes. :/

Reply 8

a_quiet_person

1

I'm not sure about the pass mark, but I think you should probably delete those past posts, apparantly you aren't meant to talk about this for a while and you have pretty much explained the questions.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2584473

"Please don't discuss the exam for the next few days! There are still some people who will have had to have taken it late, so wait a few days so not to give them an unfair advantage. "

Edit: I guess the mods did it.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 9

Original post by WASG

What do you need to get through? Is there like a pass mark?

Essentially, yes. However, Arkwright do not release any specific statistics about scores from the exam (they only release 'Marker's comments') so there's no way of knowing what this pass mark is.

Original post by a_quiet_person

I'm not sure about the pass mark, but I think you should probably delete those past posts, apparantly you aren't meant to talk about this for a while and you have pretty much explained the questions.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2584473

"Please don't discuss the exam for the next few days! There are still some people who will have had to have taken it late, so wait a few days so not to give them an unfair advantage. "

Edit: I guess the mods did it.

Yes, please bear this in mind!

Reply 10

OP

Original post by a_quiet_person

I also did questions 1 and 3, found the second part much harder.
After looking at past papers it seems like this year's questions were much more vague. Feeling hopeful though.
Any idea when the results come out?

Early March I think.

It went quite well for me; I found it a lot easier than I expected I would. So, hopefully I've done well enough to get through to the interview stage.

Reply 11

Mohammed212

12

When are we allowed to talk about the exam?

Reply 12

blayneandkert

i'm pretty sure they don't allow people to take the exam later than friday
so I think we're ok now???

Reply 13

OP

Yeah, it should probably be fine now.

Reply 14

blayneandkert

Original post by WASG

Any1 got any ideas for what they put for question 3 really worried I didn't do well on that

was that the machine with the balls one???

Reply 15

zizi_07

help!!! how much did everyone write

Reply 16

WASG

2

Do not talk about the exam. It is not safe yet trust me I speak from experience

Reply 17

OP

yes you cant talk yet
the illuminati will find you
and they will pee on all the things you love
shhhhhhhh

Reply 18