• Question: What grades do you need to go into engineering?

    Asked by MyaC on 16 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Sarah-Jane Potts

      Sarah-Jane Potts answered on 16 Mar 2021:


      It varies alot depending on the route you want to take? Different courses and different universities have different requirements so look into different prospectuses so see what they want. There are also foundation engineering courses for those wh don’t meet the grades or studied different a levles or college courses to what is needed. My course (undergraduate masters in product design engineering MEng) needed AAB but that was back in 2011 and the requirements change over the years.

    • Photo: Alex Evans

      Alex Evans answered on 20 Mar 2021:


      It really depends on the university, when I applied for university the lowest grades that the universities asked for was a C in A level maths, physics and then a subject of your choice. But if you achieve higher grades then it can mean you have a greater choice of which university you can go to. However, there are other ways of becoming an engineer if you don’t get the grades you need. Some universities offer foundation years if you don’t quite get the grades you need (I did a foundation year). But if you prefer a more hands on approach instead you could do an apprenticeship instead of A-levels which can then lead to doing a degree in engineering where sometimes a company will pay for it.

    • Photo: Anna Garcia-Teruel

      Anna Garcia-Teruel answered on 22 Mar 2021:


      As my colleagues say it just really depends.
      In Munich in Germany where I studied, if you had good grades (say an A average), then you would get accepted directly, if you had up to a B-, you would be invited to an interview, and go through a selection process. However, in other universities the requirements would be different and you could go in also with lower grades.
      In Spain, they will have say 200 spaces, and start by taking the people with the highest grades, and keep going down in order. So it will depend a lot on how many people apply for that particular subject that year and what their grades are.
      In any case, if you want to study engineering, I would recommend doing your best in learning as much as you can in maths, it is always useful regardless of the grade, and perhaps also physics can be quite useful.

    • Photo: Emma Robertson

      Emma Robertson answered on 23 Mar 2021:


      It depends on what route you want to take (such as apprenticeship or university). If university, different unis will ask for different grades depending on what course and university it is. I would recommend looking at a few university website as they will show you on the course page the grades required.
      Alternatively, you can look into apprenticeships. Again, these vary as some will require you to have A-levels and others ask for GCSEs. As an example, if you look on the apprenticeship careers page on my company’s (Renishaw) website it will show you the grades (for some of them I think it asks for 5 GCSEs with certain grades in Maths, Science and English).

    • Photo: Amy Carter

      Amy Carter answered on 25 Mar 2021:


      I think the good thing about engineering is that there’s so many different routes to get into it. For example, I went to University with ABB in my A-levels, but I didn’t go to study engineering – I think for engineering you needed 3 As. I studied Chemistry first for a couple of years and then switched over – it was a really straight-forward process, and I think as long as they can see that you are passionate about the subject and have those problem-solving skills then there will always be options available.

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