Engineering BEng/MEng (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

On Saturday mornings I help my dad top up the resin vessel on his window-cleaning van. His water-fed poles leave glass spot-free only if the water reaching them has almost no dissolved solids, so we check a cheap TDS meter at the outlet first. When the reading starts creeping above zero, the mixed-bed resin is nearly exhausted, and he always asks how many more days he can stretch it. Answering properly meant learning how ion exchange swaps calcium and magnesium for hydrogen ions, and anions for hydroxide, and why our hard local water uses up capacity faster than a customer's figures from a softer area would suggest. It also made me see that adding a reverse osmosis prefilter would change the cost per litre. I enjoy problems like this, where chemistry decides what happens but the real questions concern flow, cost and how long something lasts. That is why I want to study engineering, with a growing interest in chemical and materials processes. Reading Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik widened this. His chapter on porcelain explained how firing turns a mix of clay, feldspar and quartz into something hard and translucent, and I was struck that such an everyday object depends on controlling what happens at high temperature. I value a broad start covering mechanics, electrical systems and thermodynamics, because even the resin question turned out to involve pumps and pressure as much as chemistry.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A level have given me the tools I keep reaching for outside class. In Maths I have enjoyed differential equations most, and I used a simple exponential decay model to estimate how the outlet reading of the resin vessel might rise. It was rough, but comparing it with our meter readings showed where my assumptions about constant flow were wrong. In Physics, the required practical measuring the Young modulus of copper wire taught me how much care small extensions need, and I repeated my readings after noticing the wire had a kink. Chemistry has been the subject I connect with most to engineering, especially equilibria and energetics, which help explain why a reaction or a separation runs better under some conditions than others. For my Extended Project I investigated whether I could reduce crazing in a stoneware glaze. Crazing happens when the glaze contracts more than the clay body on cooling, so I altered the proportion of silica across six test tiles fired at my pottery class, then put them through repeated boiling-to-cold-water cycles. Two recipes showed no crazing after ten cycles, while the original crazed after three. I learned to control variables I could not fully own, such as kiln position, and to write limitations honestly rather than overclaim.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past eighteen months I have worked weekends at a garden centre, mostly in the outdoor plants area. Part of the job is managing the irrigation timers across the benches, and I noticed that plants at the far end of one line were consistently drier. My supervisor let me check it, and a partly blocked dripper was the cause. Small as that was, I liked tracing a fault through a system rather than just watering by hand. The job has also made me reliable with customers and comfortable explaining things clearly, from compost choice to why a pot needs drainage holes. Helping my dad has given me more than the resin problem. I keep his job log and invoices on a spreadsheet, which has taught me to be organised and to think about what a business actually needs to know. The pottery class began as something relaxing, and it still is, but throwing and glazing have given me a physical feel for how materials behave when wet, dry and fired. Outside all this I play five-a-side every Wednesday and help organise the team rota, which keeps me sociable and stops me spending every evening on projects. I would bring practical patience, steady work habits and real curiosity about how things are made to an engineering degree.