Everything You Need To Know About Getting Into Engineering: University Applications, Work Experience and Careers

David graduated from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge with First Class Honours and a Masters of Engineering with Distinction specialising in user interface design. He is now a number of years into working at Jaguar Land Rover as a Tech Development Engineer. In this article, David discusses everything you need to know about getting into Engineering, tracing his journey from secondary to university & beyond. Find out how to prepare your own university application, whether to seek work experience, and what David is most excited about for the future of Engineering and technology.

What prompted you to apply for an Engineering degree? Were there any elements of your secondary education you think particularly inspired you to apply?

I always enjoyed and was good at maths and physics, but engineering wasn’t a subject I’d really considered until I started my A-Levels. One of my maths teachers would regularly remind us that he wasn’t a mathematician, he was an engineer, and he was very proud of that fact. Once I started looking into engineering courses more, I thought it sounded like a perfect combination of my favourite parts of maths and physics, but also being a bit more employable at the end. I’m very happy with my decision!

How would you suggest a student goes about preparing for a degree in Engineering in terms of co-curricular pursuits?

There’s a lot you can do, depending on the type of engineer you think you might want to be. Learning a coding language like Python has become quite popular, as anyone can learn it and it can lead to some quite cool projects. 3D printing is another one that seems to be more common now, though there is a cost associated. Some schools offer STEM or engineering clubs, which can be a good way to join some collaborative projects and sometimes build something physical.

For me, I knew that my favourite parts of engineering where the theoretical parts, so I furthered this in 2 ways: (1) I increased my awareness of engineering topics from YouTube channels like Numberphile, Veritasium and Mark Rober, and (2) I practised a lot of challenging questions which were beyond the syllabus, starting with things like United Kingdom Mathematics Trust (UKMT) and British Physics Olympiad (BPhO), and later turning to the Oxford Physics Aptitude Test (PAT), Cambridge Engineering Admissions Assessment (ENGAA), and other university preparation resources. This preparation gave me a lot of confidence in the fundamentals of maths and physics, but also some knowledge of the more niche and modern developments in engineering.

Looking for Co-Curricular Ideas?

• Clubs/ Courses: We group students (15+) by particular STEM interests for our weekly STEM Club on ‘beyond the syllabus’ topics. We also run Python classes for students of all levels

• Engineering Summer School: We host a fantastic Summer School for university applicants online, hosted by our Oxbridge Engineering graduates

Did you always know you would like to work in automotive engineering?

I was never a big car person, beyond watching Top Gear, so I’m definitely not one of those people who always wanted to go into automotive engineering. At university I used my summers to do 3-month internships, to help me establish where I might want to go once I had graduated. For my first summer, I worked in a tiny 7-person start-up which designed products with medical or sporting applications. This was cool, but the small number of colleagues was quite intense, and I couldn’t imagine a career there. I decided for my following summer I would apply to companies on the other end of the size spectrum. My uncle worked for Jaguar Land Rover, and my granddad was a farmer so always had Land Rovers, so it was one of the first I considered applying to. I was also attracted to the fact that they had a proper undergraduate scheme, which could lead to a graduate job later.

My specialism at Cambridge was Mechanical Engineering, but the Electrical Engineering area of JLR sounded a lot more interesting to me, so that was the area I ended up applying to. Thanks to the general engineering course at Cambridge, I knew enough of the Electrical Engineering fundamentals.

So far, I haven’t had a big dream of where I would eventually work, I have just made the best decisions I could make at the time, and tried to keep my options open where I could.

Did you secure any work experience when applying for Engineering? How would you go about it if so?

I didn’t do any before applying to university. If you did want to do some then I would advise a few different routes: do some research as there will be a few large companies which advertise work-experience for pre-university students – send out a few applications and see what happens. Smaller firms are less likely to advertise work-experience, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it. If you find one that you like the sound of, just get in touch with them - calling them on the phone will be most effective as its harder for them to say no, but you can follow up by email. Finally, ask around family and friends of family if they know anywhere you could get experience. If you get lucky, this can be the easiest to organise.

Bear in mind that “engineering” refers to a huge field. Lots of mechanics and electricians will refer to the themselves as engineers, but most engineering students don’t go into these types of careers. Most graduate engineers go on to work in manufacturing, product development, or research instead.

Independent or Supervised Research Projects Are Great For Applications

Engineers drive society forward by solving all sorts of complex problems. There are a myriad of projects aspiring engineers can devise/ undertake to begin to hone their creative problem solving skills.

• For independent projects, you could even submit for a CREST award. CREST offer project ideas such as designing a household product that uses machine learning

• Minds Underground also offers a range of specialised guided research projects such as a project with David on ‘coding the Mars Lander’

What does your work at JLR involve?

My job (System Engineer) is to develop customer features to be released onto the vehicle, particularly in the realm of automated driving. I can’t say what I’ve been working on, but an example you might be aware of would be Adaptive Cruise Control, which when activated maintains a certain distance from the car in front.

Like many things, you’d be surprised how much goes into produce features like these. Multiple engineers work together over many years, with experts in safety, cyber security, quality, human factors, testing, software, hardware, etc. I like to think of the system engineer as comprising two key elements: (1) project management, as I’m the one who has to bring everyone together so that we work efficiently and effectively, and manage the plan to measure whether we’re on track, and (2) logical design, as I do a lot of modelling and simulation of the behaviour to help identify bugs and concerns early in the process.

Its primarily office/ computer based, which I like. There have been opportunities to do test drives of the software which some people love, but it’s not big motivator for me.

I get most of my satisfaction because the role is full of interesting challenges. There is a lot of complexity in automotive engineering, because cars have to perform in a wide range of difficult environments, customers are very discerning since they spend so much on the product, and whenever you have a lot of people working together on a project it is difficult to get leadership and communication right. These things mean that I’m always learning, and it makes full use of my problem-solving skills on a daily basis, which is what I want most from a job.

Are you excited about the future of Engineering/ technology?

Definitely, it has to be one of the most interesting areas to specialise in right now. Every year there are huge technological developments, and there are huge challenges on the horizon which we’ll have no chance of overcoming without engineers.

Global Warming is the biggest challenge, and its driving big changes like the move to electric cars, better methods of generating electricity, and more sustainable materials.

On the cooler side, software has completely changed our lives through phones and apps. Machine Learning is giving us ways of understanding data better than ever before, and will lead to leaps in many areas. Space travel is becoming more and more tangible as a potential holiday of the future. Advances in biomedical engineering like prosthetics and health sensors could help people continue to live their best lives.

Final words of inspiration for prospective engineering applicants

The core purpose of an engineer is to solve problems, and there are a lot of problems still to solve. They won’t be easy, but if you enjoy problems, enjoy challenges, enjoy improving things, then you’re well-suited to becoming an engineer.