FAQs - Engineering at Cambridge

This strongly depends on the College. I applied for Jesus College. At the year of my admission (2012), I had an interview from Mathematics, Physics and a Thinking Skill Assesment¹. In general, interviews are always part of the admission process.

2.    What are the interviews like?

The interviews and the whole admission process was actually nice. People knew that applicants were very stressed so they did their best to make them feel comfortable.  During my physics interview, I was asked some questions - not surprisingly – about physics. They were testing my ability link mathematic knowledge with physics problems. They were also asking questions like: explain why…., what forces are acting on this….. etc. Before my maths interview, I was given a set of problems and told to work though as many of them as possible. In general, they were about applying what I learned in Maths² to new unfamiliar situations. Some of them were actually exactly the questions we did at school.

3.    What advice would you give regarding the interview?

a.    Think out loud, speak. They want to know what you are thinking about. Sitting in silence will not tell them if you are struggling to divide two numbers or if you are thinking about a different approach to the question.  
b.    Make sure you know your maths and physics.

4.    How does studying Engineering work?

The teaching consists of 3 parts: lectures, labs and supervisions. Well, lectures are self-explanatory – there is on average 10 lectures a week during the first 3 years. Each lecture is 50 minutes long. Labs are about conducting different experiments that usually take 2 h in total with occasional write up (additional 1 – 8 h). The labs are interesting but most of the time I had no idea what was happening while doing it. But at the end, when I did some analysis, I kind of got it. Supervisions are the best. It is one of the things that makes Oxbridge unique. Supervision is a meeting of a student with a member of staff to discuss academic stuff. In my case, it was 2-3 Engineering students meeting with one of the professors, doctors, or PhD to discuss example sheets. Example sheets were set problems given to solve after lectures, usually it was around 1-3 questions per lecture. The supervisions were there to make sure the students will be able to pass the exam. It was not a super-intellectual brain expanding conversation about world, as I initially imagined, but it was good enough. It allowed me to ask about stuff I did not understand in the lectures (I dare to say that I understood everything in the lecture notes thanks to this). It was also a great motivation for students to work throughout the year, as opposed to just before the exam.

5.    What about the course itself?

A great aspect of engineering course at Cambridge is its structure. One studies all branches of Engineering in the first two years. The idea is that one can make more informed choice regarding specialisation in the third and fourth year. However, there is still room for diversity. In third year, I had to choose 10 courses out of 50 available. Each area of specialisation, like Mechanical, Aerothermal, Energy…., had a number of modules that counted towards them. One specialised in an area if one had at least 6 modules from that area. There were many overlaps of courses, such as the module dynamics counted towards Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Instrumentation and control etc. I ended up specialising in Mechanical Engineering because it was the broadest. Fourth year is very different. There are no supervisions in fourth year and you do a project, which you spend on perhaps a half of your time. Projects are different, ranging from direct cooperation with industry, like Rolls-Royce, or with less direct influence like modelling fluid dynamics of flames to testing a robotic arm. Anything you can think of really.

6.    Why at Cambridge?

Cambridge is one of the best universities in the world, according to the world ranking tables. What makes Cambridge such a great place?

a.    The staff
The people giving the lectures are leaders in their fields. I found the teaching staff very knowledgeable and helpful in general. They happily answered any of my questions after lectures. I found their lectures really interesting and well prepared (with some anomalies of course). University wants the best for their students so things are flexible. For example, I was supposed to do a one project from Mechanical Engineering area. The one I wanted to was about control of reader head in a CD player. I asked the teaching office if they could assign it to Mechanical area, as control modules counted towards Mechanical specialisation. They happily did that.

b.    The students
 The students (undergrads) have been carefully selected. That means that a lot of material can be covered quite quickly compared to other Universities. There are inspiring and super clever people everywhere.  

c.    The Environment

The city of Cambridge looks beautiful. There many nice and historical colleges. I enjoyed waking up in a college room and looking out through hundreds of years old glass on a building where hundreds of students lived over hundreds of years. It was simply magical. Especially, if it was foggy in the morning. There are some silly things to do too like sitting in a chair that C.S. Lewis used to sit etc.

d.    The Transport
You cycle everywhere at Cambridge. The town is flat. You get everywhere you need within 15 minutes. My relaxed journey to the CUED took 6 minutes, when I tried hard, it was only 4 minutes. Also, Cambridge is only 50 minutes from London on a train and 30 minutes from Stansted Airport.

e.    The free time
Despite Cambridge being Cambridge, one still has free time. My director of studies told us in the first year, that if you are organised and do your homework ASAP, there is time to do societies. Societies are student run clubs. Whatever you think of, there is a society that does it. From Role-Playing games, poetry, cheese tasting,  entrepreneurship, lacross, Frisbee, Ice-Hockey, dancesport, building solar powered vehiles, you name it. I spend a lot of my time in such societies and it was really enriching. It is also a great way to meet people. I have known people who would spend 12 h rowing a week and still get first.

7.    What would I do differently if I lived though this again?

I would try to be more organised, so that I would have more time for my friends and I would get more involved in societies. The more involved you get, the more enriching it is.
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¹A sample test of thinking skill assessment can be found here: http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/images/24890-tsa-cambridge-specimen-test.pdf

² I need to say that I did A-levels, I did not study the last two years of high school in the Czech Republic