Engineering Students: Can you balance studying and a part-time job?

The number of lectures depends on the university. To be honest, the distribution of the lectures is probably the biggest barrier - One lecture in the morning and one in the afternoon means finding a job would be difficult because lectures cross over those two key times. The university usually employees its own students for some roles, and local businesses can be quite relaxed too - We have a Costa Coffee inside one of our buildings, and they seem to allow students to leave for lectures during their shift, or heavily base it around that sort of schedule.

18-20 hours a week of lectures, tutorials and labs probably isn't a bad estimate. The worst I've known is for some students to get 22-24 hours a week as we do some half-modules and due to timetabling, they had both half-modules in the same term. Many universities give you a day or afternoon off as an opportunity to do sports, although you don't have to. I usually get Wednesdays completely free (although this term I do not), so there is that. Just remember that your timetable may change termly, monthly or weekly depending on what work needs to be done, so during 9am-3pm is usually a bad time for a job. 3pm-6pm can also be risky and I've had a few lectures go on that late, but it's not too common. When we had projects to do, I would be in the workshop for 5-10 hours a week, so anticipate the effort you'll have to put in outside of what's scheduled for you.


Weekend work will be your best bet. I'm a second year mechanical and to be honest, I pretty much do nothing at weekends. I do work when it's required, but I'm usually quite free.

In terms of workload, it really depends. I was able to do little in my first year and still get some great marks. My lectures were usually over by 3pm and all my work was typically finished before 6pm so I had all my evenings off (until around the time of deadlines/exams where you up the effort). So it really depends how much work you need to put in, but I didn't find it as crazily busy as many people suggest it is. It's just tiring though with quite a lot of contact time, so I like to keep my weekends clear for sleeping and relaxing.


If you want to get a job, I would consider leaving it until after Christmas just so you can fully appreciate the workload you would have to do. Build up commitments instead of starting with many and having to drop them because that would just look bad. See what your timetable is like and see if the university is hiring in one of their receptions, food stalls or wherever else - They should have the most flexibility regarding employment. Just expect your timetable to change though. I've had to miss a few important sessions because I had booked one thing and then they changed my timetable and added a lab when I was not going to be there. Weekend work would probably be the most reliable for you but perhaps the trickier to find as everyone else will be looking for it too.

Thank you so much for this. Honestly, I didn't expect such a long answer, but it's really helpful
I have a question though, which university do you go to? Also, did you get a job that you kept till the end of the year or did you have several different ones throughout the year?
I think I agree with you about waiting till Christmas to get a job, sounds like a sensible thing to do. Not sure I could earn enough through a weekend job, but something is better than nothing really.
Also, I was under the impression that universities are really organised and have fixed timetables but clearly I was wrong haha.
What about working online, I've never done it but I've seen adverts for people required to work online. Is it just a bunch of lies or do you know anyone that earns money online and is it feasible?
I appreciate you for telling me that the course isn't as difficult as I had thought it would be, I was worrying again haha
Thanks again your help

If you want to get a first then no, 2:1 still no but possibly, 2:2 got for it. I'm currently in second year mech eng and just to get a 1:1/2:1/ need to review the content each week for maths which takes me 2-3 hours a day, thats just one module. The reports, revision, tutorials make up for the rest of my time. At this point you begin not to have a social life.