Engineering Science at Oxford Virtual Open Day: All about the MEng in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford
The Course
MEng in Engineering Science
You’ll spend your first two years studying the core topics which we believe are essential for all engineers to understand.
Having developed a solid grounding in these, you’ll choose to specialise in one of the eight branches of Engineering Science:
- Biomedical
- Chemical and Process
- Civil and Offshore
- Control
- Electrical and Opto-electronic
- Information
- Solid Materials and Mechanics
- Thermofluids and Turbomachinery
Course handbooks
Heather, St John’s
The course is extremely broad, so you get a foundation knowledge across a range of disciplines before specialising.
Teaching and Learning
Our course is delivered via a combination of classroom instruction, laboratory and project activity. The course has been carefully designed to balance theory, which is covered in lectures and reinforced in tutorials in your college, with practical work completed in laboratory exercises.
The Department provides your labs and your lectures. Tutorials are a small, group session with an academic member of staff, held at your college. You should expect a one-hour tutorial after approximately every fourth lecture, which amounts to approximately two tutorials a week during termtime.
Tutorials
Copies of all the tutorial problem sheets are distributed to colleges for circulation at the start of each term; they are also available online. Tutors will often schedule tutorial work after all four lectures corresponding to the tutorial problems have been given.
As you progress through the course, tutorials will be replaced by intercollegiate classes which are run in the department. The pattern remains as one example sheet for every four lectures, but the material will be taught by specialists in the field.
Coursework
Practical coursework is an essential element in the education of every professional engineer. As well as illustrating ideas and topics from lectures and tutorials, it has a special place in our training. A basic function of practical work is to gain experience and understanding of using a piece of equipment to perform a task or make a measurement. You will see that theoretical principles are not merely intellectual ideas, but are there for practical use. Another function, realised in recording and presenting the results of experiments, is training in the skill of technical communication; this skill is essential in the real world of engineering where people work together on large enterprises.
Ruby, Hertford College
Engineering involves a lot of team-work and you have the opportunity to work with people from many different disciplines and backgrounds.
Specialising
As you enter your third year, you will begin to specialise in your chosen branch of engineering from the list below. You will gain an understanding of how your technical knowledge relates to engineering in the wider world (covering topics such as project management, financing and technology strategy).
When selecting your course options after year 2, you should consider which engineering pathway you intend to take for the remainder of your degree; this decision will impact on your career and your opportunities to seek professional engineering status through the Engineering Council in the UK.
- Biomedical
- Chemical and Process
- Civil and Offshore
- Control
- Electrical and Opto-electronic
- Information
- Solid Materials and Mechanics
- Thermofluids and Turbomachinery
Heather, St John’s College
The field is so much bigger than most people assume, everyone thinks of bridges and cars but engineering covers basically everything.
Exams
To successfully pass the MEng in Engineering Science, you must pass four sets of University Examinations: Preliminary Examinations (Prelims) at the end of your first year, and three further sets of examinations of the Final Honour School (Finals or FHS) at the end of each subsequent year. These are public examinations and differ from collections you may sit periodically in college to help you and your tutors to assess your progress. You will also have to pass practical work (assessed coursework).
Examiners are appointed independently from among the teaching staff, and are formally independent but are required to make the examination reflect the content of the lecture courses and their accompanying tutorial example sheets.
A useful guide to examinations, including how to prepare and enter for examinations is available here.
Projects
In your third-year design project, you will write the sort of detailed design proposal, in teams of 4-5 students, that could be used as the basis for a new product or engineering project. You’ll be making economic and design decisions, choosing between conflicting priorities and allocating work amongst the group. This will take place in the project meetings which you'll arrange alongside your weekly classes with an academic.
In your fourth and final year, you will choose six specialist options from across engineering science. You can see a list of current options and details of the 4th year project at the link below.