Question: How do you get into engineering?

Abbie Hutty answered on 19 Feb 2020: last edited 27 Feb 2020 10:11 am

My route was that my teachers suggested it to me when I was doing my GCSEs and didn’t know what I wanted to do as a career, as they knew I liked making things. But I didn’t really know what engineering was and like a lot of people I confused it with “Mechanic” and thought I’d be fixing broken washing machines and things and didn’t know why they thought that sounded like something I’d enjoy. Then I saw a thing on the news about a mission to send a probe to Mars – called Beagle II, and heard that British Engineers were working on it. And I thought ok, perhaps I don’t know what engineering is, as designing missions to Mars sounds pretty cool actually.

Then I researched it and realised that engineers design new things, not fix old things. And the things they get to design are cool things like robots and green energy and spacecraft. And so I did a summer school thing called Headstart, to find out more about engineering, which was a week residential at a university where you found out about the different types on engineering like civil, mechanical, electrical, and so on. Then I also did the engineering education scheme which was a 6 month project in year 12 with a local engineering company where they give you a real world engineering project and you work on it with their support, and then present your solution at the end. Those things helped me understand what engineering was and what type I enjoyed best, so that I could decide with more confidence and knowledge what next steps I wanted to take.

I then looked up Engineering degrees, as I knew I wanted to go to University, and found out what subjects you needed to study for A-level to get onto the courses. I chose Mechanical Engineering, and almost all of the courses I found said you had to study A level Physics and Maths to get on the course, so I did those, plus DT and French for my A levels. Then I did my Mechanical Engineering degree and applied for graduate jobs as a mechanical engineer and am still with the same company today!

There are lots of other ways into engineering – apprenticeships are a really good option now as you normally join a company and do your training through them – so you can still get the same degree qualification that I got, but alongside working in a company, either by doing alternate terms in work placements or in college, or by doing like a year in college and then a year in work. But the whole time you get paid by your employer, and they pay your college fees as well, and then you have a guaranteed job at the end once you are qualified as well! If I was making the choice again now, I definitely think I would be tempted to do it that way rather than just going to University and paying for my own degree course.