"Headstart" for science/engineering students

[User]

 

[Archie_tect]

My daughter applied for a Headstart [or whatever it was called then] place at Newcastle University and loved it. She came away with new friends and more confidence, couldn't wait to get to university and helped her focus on what she wanted. Thoroughly recommend it.

 

[vernon]

My son attended a Headstart event at Newcastle University. He loved every minute of it.

He then went on and got a place at Sheffield University to study Mechanical Engineering.

Three years later he failed his degree.

 

[Dan B]

Thanks Vernon - that's terribly reassuring!

I did my masters at Sheffield and I funded much of my drinking money by doing Fortran projects for undergrad engineers - but I know they had a seriously hard coursework schedule.

You were in physics?

I ask only because when I was an engineering ugrad it was always the physicists who knew the first thing about computers

 

[marinyork]

It's a good programme, but I'm very ambivalent about it - it's really talking kids into subjects for which there are very few jobs (in the UK anyway).

 

[vernon]

It's a good programme, but I'm very ambivalent about it - it's really talking kids into subjects for which there are very few jobs (in the UK anyway).

Despite my son's failure to get a degree, he got the first job that he applied for as a back room whizz at an advertising agency in Leeds where he is thriving.

Ironically his graduate peers are still searching for work in their chosen engineering fields.

 

[vernon]

Thanks Vernon - that's terribly reassuring!

I did my masters at Sheffield and I funded much of my drinking money by doing Fortran projects for undergrad engineers - but I know they had a seriously hard coursework schedule.

I used to resent the sociologists, social policy students and fine artists at Leeds University. The ones I shared a house with were unaware that there were two eleven o'clocks in the day and rarely had more than five hours of lectures per week. I rarely had less than five per day apart from Wednesdays. I never got to use my engineering degree as I graduated just as Thatcher had destroyed the manufacturing and energy supply sectors that were the prime recruiters for my field of engineering.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I never got to use my engineering degree as I graduated just as Thatcher had destroyed the manufacturing and energy supply sectors that were the prime recruiters for my field of engineering.

My brother did a course in Electrical Engineering at Sheffield at the time Thatcher was destroying manufacturing, he did find work here though but ended up designing circuit boards in Austin, Texas.
We saw some good bands in Sheff at the time