Aeronautics Universities
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Aeronautics Universities
Dear all,
I am currently in sxith form, studying further maths, maths, physics and geography. I hope to do well enough to go to university, in order to study aeronautics.
Can anyone point me in the right direction of which are the best universites to do aeronatuics?
Furthermore would you still be accepted into aeronatics companies if one was to study mechanical engineering, rather than aeronautics, for aeronautics seems to be very specified, so if I were to go to other engineering companies would they still accept me with an aeronatuics degree?
Regards
Q
I am currently in sxith form, studying further maths, maths, physics and geography. I hope to do well enough to go to university, in order to study aeronautics.
Can anyone point me in the right direction of which are the best universites to do aeronatuics?
Furthermore would you still be accepted into aeronatics companies if one was to study mechanical engineering, rather than aeronautics, for aeronautics seems to be very specified, so if I were to go to other engineering companies would they still accept me with an aeronatuics degree?
Regards
Q
Firstly, I hope that I can be of more use to you in this than I have in the past in my failed attempt to help you get some airfield work.
Secondly, universities I'd personally rate (in no particular order)
- Southampton
- Glasgow
- Hertfordshire
- Kingston
- Brunel (the Aviation Engineering degree, not the Aerospace Engineering or MechEng with Aero)
- Loughborough
So far as degree choice is concerned, the aerospace industry is full of people with a whole variety of degrees - not to mention many with out, but most of the good (non maintenance, engineering) jobs go to people with Engineering Council accredited degrees. This of-course includes most Aero-Eng courses, but also mechanical, systems, electronic, etc.
Similarly, there are an enormous number of people out there doing all sorts of professional jobs, outside of aerospace, with aeronautical engineering degrees. I did an aero-eng degree and amongst my closest friends from that, there's a Navy Engineering officer who became a schoolteacher, a chap who did a PhD in engineering education then became a highly overpaid consultant in IT, his wife who started overseeing large parts of an aircraft factory but is now a regional manager for parcelforce(!), plus surprisingly enough a handful of pilots and aeronautical engineers - you get the message.
It's also possible without great difficulty to become a chartered aeronautical engineer with any EngC accredited degree and the right experience, or a chartered mechanical engineer with an aero degree and the right experience (I did anyhow).
So, I'd not worry too much about the exact title of the degree - pick something that is...
(a) accredited by the Engineering Council (or about to be),
(b) full of things you'd like to do for three or four years, and
(c) somewhere you don't mind living for that time.
What dictates your career path after graduation is likely to be most a combination of luck, and your final year project - although clearly a good grade from a well respected university help a lot.
A lot of universities offer "UCAS days" for sixth formers which are worth looking into, since they'll often give you a good chance to see what it's about. If nothing on their websites, phone or (better) Email the admissions tutor(s) and ask about this - nothing ventured and all that.
G
Secondly, universities I'd personally rate (in no particular order)
- Southampton
- Glasgow
- Hertfordshire
- Kingston
- Brunel (the Aviation Engineering degree, not the Aerospace Engineering or MechEng with Aero)
- Loughborough
So far as degree choice is concerned, the aerospace industry is full of people with a whole variety of degrees - not to mention many with out, but most of the good (non maintenance, engineering) jobs go to people with Engineering Council accredited degrees. This of-course includes most Aero-Eng courses, but also mechanical, systems, electronic, etc.
Similarly, there are an enormous number of people out there doing all sorts of professional jobs, outside of aerospace, with aeronautical engineering degrees. I did an aero-eng degree and amongst my closest friends from that, there's a Navy Engineering officer who became a schoolteacher, a chap who did a PhD in engineering education then became a highly overpaid consultant in IT, his wife who started overseeing large parts of an aircraft factory but is now a regional manager for parcelforce(!), plus surprisingly enough a handful of pilots and aeronautical engineers - you get the message.
It's also possible without great difficulty to become a chartered aeronautical engineer with any EngC accredited degree and the right experience, or a chartered mechanical engineer with an aero degree and the right experience (I did anyhow).
So, I'd not worry too much about the exact title of the degree - pick something that is...
(a) accredited by the Engineering Council (or about to be),
(b) full of things you'd like to do for three or four years, and
(c) somewhere you don't mind living for that time.
What dictates your career path after graduation is likely to be most a combination of luck, and your final year project - although clearly a good grade from a well respected university help a lot.
A lot of universities offer "UCAS days" for sixth formers which are worth looking into, since they'll often give you a good chance to see what it's about. If nothing on their websites, phone or (better) Email the admissions tutor(s) and ask about this - nothing ventured and all that.
G
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Quango,
a few 'flavours' of Aerospace related degree you might consider are:
1. Aeronautical (Aircraft design: performance, concepts, aerodynamics, structures, flight mechanics, handling, flying qualities, flight control system design, powerplants)
2. Avionics (Nav, mission systems, RADAR, sensors, displays etc.)
3. Systems Engineering (Customer and system/sub-system requirements , system architecture & management, product life cycle issues, complex engineering project management + some detailed eng. options)
4. Spacecadets (orbital mechanics, satellites, rocketery, payload, missions, light weight structures and dynamics etc).
5. Manufacturing (metallic, plastic, composite materials, manufacturing processes, quality, plant design)
6. Mechanical (a bit of everything, strong on CAD/structures/component and subsystem design and integration, power services, and design solutions - achieving mass/volume constraints)
7. Electronics (as avionics)
8. Human Factors (pyschology, workload, job design, erogonomics, etc)
9. Maths, science degrees are often recruited too, especially for R&T though often witha PhD or postgrad. specialist degree.
10. Computer sciences/Software Engineering (all areas, but real-time computing quite a speciality) .... a way to add cost and complexity to an aircraft without adding weight - doh ! In major short supply, as this is in demand across the economy)
Depends what area you fancy starting off in...most degrees include some intros to all of the above + accredited courses include contract and employment law, languages, accountancy, marketing, etc.
Whatever you choose, you can usually change specialism later in your career... often by doing an taught postgrad. masters degree or PhD or even intensive short courses... need update skills through career obviously).
As to Unis you might also consider:
Imperial
City
Queen Mary Westfield
all in London.
Bristol
Bath
which benefit from ties with Airbus @ Filton (external lectures support to final year design projects, industrial placements)
Bath actually lectures some engineering courses in the foreign language (gulp!) designed for European mobility!
Loughborough
Manchester
Salford
Sheffield
Liverpool
which benefit from ties with BAE SYSTEMS (external lectures support to final year design projects, industrial placements)
Southampton is well respected for its helicopter know-how and has had good links with Westland helicopters).
Shrivenham is great for people interested in the armed forces.
Belfast + Shorts aircraft company (Bombardier biz jets)
But all the big UK aerospace companies (primes: BAE SYSTEMS, Airbus, Thales and second tier suppliers R-R, Smiths, MessierDowty) get involved with the UK Unis, especially for R&T with the profs!).
Trouble is, without doing the degree course, you won't know if you really like it until you're in, but usually they all have enough interesting electives to keep you interested!
I hope you succeed in whatever you chose to do... definitely visit the Uni to check out the staff and facilities and town/area + make sure you can take part in lots of fun hobbies/past-times - there are loads of extra-curricula activities and sports which develop people and managment skills and are downright fun
Hope this helps. Good luck.
P.S.: Appologies for any Uni missed off + errors, I ain't perfick!
a few 'flavours' of Aerospace related degree you might consider are:
1. Aeronautical (Aircraft design: performance, concepts, aerodynamics, structures, flight mechanics, handling, flying qualities, flight control system design, powerplants)
2. Avionics (Nav, mission systems, RADAR, sensors, displays etc.)
3. Systems Engineering (Customer and system/sub-system requirements , system architecture & management, product life cycle issues, complex engineering project management + some detailed eng. options)
4. Spacecadets (orbital mechanics, satellites, rocketery, payload, missions, light weight structures and dynamics etc).
5. Manufacturing (metallic, plastic, composite materials, manufacturing processes, quality, plant design)
6. Mechanical (a bit of everything, strong on CAD/structures/component and subsystem design and integration, power services, and design solutions - achieving mass/volume constraints)
7. Electronics (as avionics)
8. Human Factors (pyschology, workload, job design, erogonomics, etc)
9. Maths, science degrees are often recruited too, especially for R&T though often witha PhD or postgrad. specialist degree.
10. Computer sciences/Software Engineering (all areas, but real-time computing quite a speciality) .... a way to add cost and complexity to an aircraft without adding weight - doh ! In major short supply, as this is in demand across the economy)
Depends what area you fancy starting off in...most degrees include some intros to all of the above + accredited courses include contract and employment law, languages, accountancy, marketing, etc.
Whatever you choose, you can usually change specialism later in your career... often by doing an taught postgrad. masters degree or PhD or even intensive short courses... need update skills through career obviously).
As to Unis you might also consider:
Imperial
City
Queen Mary Westfield
all in London.
Bristol
Bath
which benefit from ties with Airbus @ Filton (external lectures support to final year design projects, industrial placements)
Bath actually lectures some engineering courses in the foreign language (gulp!) designed for European mobility!
Loughborough
Manchester
Salford
Sheffield
Liverpool
which benefit from ties with BAE SYSTEMS (external lectures support to final year design projects, industrial placements)
Southampton is well respected for its helicopter know-how and has had good links with Westland helicopters).
Shrivenham is great for people interested in the armed forces.
Belfast + Shorts aircraft company (Bombardier biz jets)
But all the big UK aerospace companies (primes: BAE SYSTEMS, Airbus, Thales and second tier suppliers R-R, Smiths, MessierDowty) get involved with the UK Unis, especially for R&T with the profs!).
Trouble is, without doing the degree course, you won't know if you really like it until you're in, but usually they all have enough interesting electives to keep you interested!
I hope you succeed in whatever you chose to do... definitely visit the Uni to check out the staff and facilities and town/area + make sure you can take part in lots of fun hobbies/past-times - there are loads of extra-curricula activities and sports which develop people and managment skills and are downright fun
Hope this helps. Good luck.
P.S.: Appologies for any Uni missed off + errors, I ain't perfick!
Last edited by Aerodramatics(UK); 17th Dec 2005 at 21:56.
My complements Aerodramatics, that's a heck of a first post!
Incidentally, the courses I named were those I personally rate highest, it wasn't intended to be a complete list. Aerodramatic has come pretty close to a complete list, and well done for it.
Incidentally, if memory serves, BAE's preferred universities are Southampton, Loughborough and Glasgow. Not the only employer by any means, but an interesting gauge of quality.
G
Incidentally, the courses I named were those I personally rate highest, it wasn't intended to be a complete list. Aerodramatic has come pretty close to a complete list, and well done for it.
Incidentally, if memory serves, BAE's preferred universities are Southampton, Loughborough and Glasgow. Not the only employer by any means, but an interesting gauge of quality.
G
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Do they still do the "Thick Sandwich" degrees, which I did many years ago at Kingston. That year out in industry was the best year ever, both professionally and personnally (and I was lucky enough to do it in France). If you get the chance to spend time in industry and particularly abroad, grab it.
All the other posts are excellent and I fully agree with what they say.
All the other posts are excellent and I fully agree with what they say.
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I studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire, included inmy course was a year out in industry. For this i worked at Airbus UK wing design centre at Bristol, great year and has really helped me get employment by talking about what i did there and using the industry jargon you simply cant get from an academic course. Also in the first week of the final year we went to cabin air for a flight in a light Cessna Aircraft and a RB-22 helicopter as part of the course to give the engineers an insight to real A/c dynamics (of course many of the course were part of the ATC in their teenage years) Awesome fun and i also managed a 2nd flight after pointing out the most faults with an a/c they had deliberatly made US for the students to do a maintaince check. Whilst at herfordshire i was also able to pursue my passion of motorsport through formula student, again a wonderful talking point in interviews and looks great on CV. Hard work but great fun and offers the broad spectrum of engineering issues, ie costing, bill of materials, design and most importantly hands on manufacture to give a real insight to tooling implications and methods.
After failing the NATS medical with a heart condition i swiftly found 2 jobs both in the Aerospace field. I accepted the offer from Atkins Aviation and Defence to start on their graduate scheme and started this week, my first project seems like its going to be A400M wingbox work And being a consultancy the variety of projects means you wont get too specialised and ill hopefully remain as broadly skilled as what my degree offered. Ive just been looking at the CV's online of the guys (and suprising number of girls) working here and plenty have degrees in Mech engineering, some 2:1 and some going on to PhD's etc. My main point to express to anyone is too get well learned in a wide range of engineering areas to start with, means you have plenty of doors to choice when you graduate.
Cheers
Jonny
After failing the NATS medical with a heart condition i swiftly found 2 jobs both in the Aerospace field. I accepted the offer from Atkins Aviation and Defence to start on their graduate scheme and started this week, my first project seems like its going to be A400M wingbox work And being a consultancy the variety of projects means you wont get too specialised and ill hopefully remain as broadly skilled as what my degree offered. Ive just been looking at the CV's online of the guys (and suprising number of girls) working here and plenty have degrees in Mech engineering, some 2:1 and some going on to PhD's etc. My main point to express to anyone is too get well learned in a wide range of engineering areas to start with, means you have plenty of doors to choice when you graduate.
Cheers
Jonny
