Super-Curricular Activities for Engineering: Reading, Competitions and Projects

Super-curricular activities for engineering usually mean a mix of reading, competitions and a self-directed project: Henry Petroski and J.E. Gordon on engineering failure and structural reasoning, entry to the Big Bang Competition, STEM Racing or an IMechE schools challenge, and a CAD, robotics or coding project built from idea to working outcome. Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial applicants also sit the ESAT, and the same problem-solving habit this reading and competition work builds overlaps directly with ESAT preparation.

Depth carries more weight than volume in this assessment. Tutors value a term spent reading two books closely enough to explain what each reveals about a design trade-off or a structural failure well above a long list of open days and one-off talks attended without follow-up. The engineering-specific version of this involves being able to say how something works, why an engineer chose one material or design over another, and what constraint shaped that choice.

At interview, this distinction becomes explicit. Engineering interviewers at Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial routinely ask candidates to unpack a design problem, sketch a mechanism, or defend a claim made in the personal statement, so a competition entry or article mentioned there but not properly understood tends to unravel within a few follow-up questions. Activity pursued out of genuine interest tends to survive that kind of scrutiny; activity chosen only to fill a UCAS form usually does not.

Why super-curricular activity matters for engineering applications

Competitive engineering courses receive many applications from candidates with near-identical grade profiles, all predicted the A-level combination of maths and physics the course requires, so admissions tutors lean on super-curricular evidence to separate genuine engagement with the subject from generic enthusiasm for it. A personal statement that names a book, a competition or a project gives a tutor something concrete to question, which a statement built only from school achievements does not.

Engineering also covers a wide range of specialisms, including mechanical, civil, electronic, aeronautical and chemical engineering, and course structures differ between universities in how early they expect a student to have picked a direction. Tutors tend to welcome applicants who show some sense of which branch interests them and why, even where that interest is provisional, because it suggests the enthusiasm expressed on the form has already been tested against a specific area of the subject.

Reading around engineering

Reading remains one of the most accessible super-curricular activities, since it requires no application process and can be pursued at whatever pace suits a student's timetable. Its value lies in the ability to discuss what was read: an engineering failure analysed in a book, a structural principle explained in a magazine article, or an argument made in a lecture transcript all give an applicant material they can reason about in an interview, beyond what they can simply recall.

A short, well-chosen reading list usually serves an application better than an ambitious one abandoned halfway through. Titles that explain engineering history, failure and design reasoning in accessible language tend to work well for sixth formers, alongside a professional magazine or two for a sense of current practice.

Reading pitched a little beyond A-level level is more useful than reading pitched well beyond it. A book that cannot be explained in a student's own words by the time of interview offers little advantage over a book never opened, and interviewers are generally quick to notice the difference between genuine engagement and a title dropped into a personal statement for effect.

• Books on engineering history and failure analysis, such as those written by Henry Petroski
• A structural mechanics book written for a general reader, such as J.E. Gordon's Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down
• Ingenia, the Royal Academy of Engineering's magazine, for current projects and interviews with practising engineers
• A technology section of a serious newspaper or magazine, followed regularly over several months

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Competitions, essay prizes and lecture series

Engineering competitions test applied problem-solving under a real constraint, such as a budget, a material limit or a deadline, in a way that mirrors the design modules taught in the first year of most engineering degrees. Entering one, even without winning, gives an applicant a concrete project to describe in a personal statement and a genuine account of what went wrong and what was learned from it.

Lecture series offer a lower-effort entry point and work well earlier in Year 12, before a student has settled on a specific project. The Royal Institution's public lecture programme and equivalent series run by engineering departments and professional bodies cover topics well beyond the A-level syllabus, and taking notes on two or three lectures across a year usually generates more personal statement material than a single open day.

• The Big Bang Competition, the UK's national science and engineering competition for young people
• The Institution of Mechanical Engineers' schools competitions and design challenges
• The Arkwright Engineering Scholarships, a selective scheme combining an aptitude test, an interview and an industry-sponsored mentor
• STEM Racing, formerly known as F1 in Schools, a design and manufacturing competition built around a miniature racing car, run through regional, national and world finals

Projects, EPQ and societies

A project that runs from an idea to a working outcome, however small, demonstrates the kind of iterative problem-solving that engineering courses are built around. This can be a robotics or CAD project entered through a school club, a piece of code written to solve a defined problem, or a physical build undertaken at home, and its value rests on the applicant's ability to describe what was tried, what failed, and what was changed in response.

The Extended Project Qualification gives structure to independent research, and a title framed as an engineering question, comparing bridge designs, evaluating a material choice, or investigating a specific failure, produces a piece of work directly relevant to an application. Tutors tend to read a well-chosen EPQ title as evidence that a student can manage a long piece of self-directed research, a skill the first year of an engineering degree assumes.

School engineering, robotics and STEM societies offer a lower-commitment way to sustain interest across two years, and often lead naturally into a competition entry or a project once a student finds a focus within the club's activities. Regular attendance, described honestly, tends to read better in a personal statement than a role invented to sound more senior than it was.

Work experience and exposure to engineering practice

Structured work experience is harder to arrange in engineering than in some other subjects, since site safety and insurance rules limit what a firm can let an under-18 do, and admissions tutors generally do not expect a formal placement as standard. Where a placement, a week of shadowing, or a family contact at a firm is available, it adds value chiefly because it grounds an applicant's interest in how engineers actually work day to day, beyond how the subject is taught at school.

Where a placement is not possible, several structured alternatives exist and are widely accepted as substitutes for it.

• Engineering Development Trust Headstart and Insight courses, short residential courses run at university engineering departments
• Virtual insight days and work-shadowing programmes run by engineering employers and professional institutions
• Structured online courses and webinars run by bodies such as the IET or the Royal Academy of Engineering

A timeline from Year 12 to Year 13

Year 12 works best as an exploratory phase. Trying a range of activities, a book, a lecture series, a school society and perhaps one smaller competition, before committing significant time to any single one, helps a student find what genuinely holds their interest before the personal statement has to be drafted.

The summer between Year 12 and Year 13 tends to suit longer commitments, a residential course, a sustained project, or the research phase of an EPQ, since school terms leave less uninterrupted time for this kind of work. A student who has narrowed their interest by this point can use the summer to go deeper into it instead of starting something new.

Autumn of Year 13 is for drawing the two years of activity together into a personal statement and preparing for interview if shortlisted, which works better as a process of selecting the two or three strongest examples than trying to include everything attempted along the way.

Writing about it: personal statement, interview and common mistakes

A personal statement earns more from analysis than from a list. Naming a book, a competition or a project is only the starting point; what a tutor is actually reading for is the sentence after that, the one explaining what the activity revealed about an engineering principle and how it connects to the degree being applied for. The same standard applies at interview, where an activity mentioned in writing is often the first thing an interviewer asks about in more depth.

A small number of mistakes recur across engineering applications.

• Listing many activities briefly instead of a few discussed in depth
• Choosing a well known, widely entered competition and assuming the name alone will do the work of demonstrating interest
• Claiming to have read a book or article without being able to discuss it under questioning
• Treating super-curricular activity as separate from A-level study, instead of linking it back to specific physics, maths or design content already covered

Recommended resources for Engineering

• Ingenia: The Royal Academy of Engineering's magazine covers current engineering projects and interviews with practising engineers in accessible language.
• Arkwright Engineering Scholarships: A selective scholarship scheme combining an aptitude test, an interview and an industry-sponsored mentor, widely recognised by engineering admissions tutors.
• The Big Bang Competition: The UK's national science and engineering competition for young people, open to a wide range of project types and levels of experience.
• The Smallpeice Trust: Runs residential engineering courses at UK universities that give sixth formers structured, hands-on exposure to the subject.
• Engineering Development Trust: Runs Headstart and Insight courses, short residential programmes at university engineering departments that work as an alternative to formal work experience.
• Institution of Mechanical Engineers: Runs schools competitions and design challenges that test applied problem-solving under real constraints.
• Institution of Engineering and Technology: A professional body offering schools resources, lectures and challenge days across electronic, electrical and general engineering.
• Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: A long-running public lecture series covering science and engineering topics well beyond the A-level syllabus, freely available online.
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Free access to MIT undergraduate engineering course materials, useful for reading beyond the A-level syllabus in a specific specialism.
• Isaac Physics: Free structured problems that stretch A-level physics and maths, widely used by engineering applicants to prepare for admissions tests and interview.
• Royal Academy of Engineering: The UK's national academy for engineering, publishing resources, competitions and programmes aimed at school-age students.
• This is Engineering: An EngineeringUK campaign presenting real engineers and current projects, useful for exploring different specialisms before narrowing an interest.

How ESAT preparation overlaps with super-curricular problem-solving

Engineering applicants to Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial sit the ESAT, a Pearson-delivered test run by UAT-UK, and the reasoning it tests is the same kind that super-curricular problem-solving builds. Every candidate sits Maths 1, and most engineering courses add Maths 2 and Physics, each lasting 40 minutes and made up of 27 multiple-choice questions, scored on a 1.0 to 9.0 scale with no penalty for a wrong answer.

Isaac Physics, a free question bank built for students moving from A-level toward university-level reasoning, is widely used to prepare for exactly this kind of multi-step problem, and the UKMT Senior Mathematical Challenge trains the same non-routine, time-pressured thinking in a maths-only format. Treating these as part of the super-curricular reading and competition programme serves both ESAT preparation and the personal statement; a separate admissions-test chore rarely does.

• Isaac Physics: free, structured physics and maths problem sets that extend beyond the A-level syllabus
• UKMT Senior Mathematical Challenge: a 90-minute multiple-choice paper open to Year 13 and below

The full module breakdown, scoring scale and registration timeline are set out in the ESAT guide.

An applicant still weighing engineering against a maths degree can compare this list with super-curricular activities for maths, which covers a parallel set of reading, competitions and problem sets.

Framing a title as an engineering question is only the first step, and EPQ ideas and examples sets out how to narrow one down into a workable research project.

Which engineering courses require the ESAT

The ESAT is required for Cambridge Engineering and Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Oxford Engineering Science and its named engineering degrees, Imperial's engineering courses, and UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering, with each course listing its modules on its own page and in UAT-UK's course list. Candidates register directly with UAT-UK, a collaboration between Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, and the university itself does not handle registration. The test is held in two sittings, October and January, and Cambridge and Oxford applicants with the mid-October UCAS deadline sit in October.

Where an engineering course at another university is not listed here, applicants should check that course's own admissions page; not every engineering department requires an admissions test at all, so the ESAT should not be assumed.

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