Are the engineering universities in the UK alot harder to get into than in the United States?
People are saying that to transfer to a UK university to study engineering you have to have extremely good grades. In the United States you can have somewhat decent grades , like several C's and still be able to transfer to a pretty good university that offers an engineering degree. Are there any schools in the UK where this is possible ? So in the UK are the university acceptance procedures totally different? ( to transfer from a school in the U.S. to a university in the U.K. that offers engineering.)
Engineering - 2 Answers
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1 :
The whole organization of the school system (say from age 11 upwards) is different in the UK and US. You will probably find that UK first degrees (BSc or BEng) start at a higher level than US first degrees. They are often more narrowly focussed as well. The UK doesn't have the same system of "majors and minors" in first degrees that the US has. In the UK it is quite normal to go straight from a first degree to a PhD, without any "masters" or "grad school" stage in between. You might well find that "average" US grades that would be get you onto a US degree course are not enough for an "average" UK degree, simply because you would be starting from a point 6 or 12 months behind where the "average" UK student would have reached before starting a university course.. I'm talking about so called "Russell Group" of about the 20 or 30 top UK universities here. For Engineering, that would include Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, York, Warwick, Swansea, Southampton, etc). The previous UK government (which was kicked out 6 months ago) had a policy of "wider access to degree level courses", and part of that policy was to rename many second and third tier colleges as "universities" so they could award "degrees" as opposed to other qualifications, but without actually changing what they taught. So beware of relatively new UK "universities" with apparently low entry requirements - you might finish up on a third-rate course with a worthless piece of paper at the end of it.
2 :
I would expect that there are far fewer engineering colleges in the UK than in the US. That alone would make them seem tougher to get into.
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