What extracurriculars can I do for engineering?

Engineering is a broad, applied discipline, and top UK universities (Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford, UCL, Warwick, Bath, Bristol, Manchester) primarily judge applicants on academic performance: the ESAT, plus A-level grades and interviews. Extracurriculars matter, but they matter as evidence you understand what engineers do: design under constraints, build and make trade-offs when physics and the real world disagree.

The strongest engineering personal statements describe one or two things the applicant built or investigated, in enough technical detail that the reader believes they understood it. Vague mentions of "loving maths and physics" without a specific project are common; a paragraph about the linkage you designed for a robot arm, the reason your Greenpower car's motor overheated, or why your bridge model collapsed at a lower load than you predicted, will stand out.

Here's what's worth your time.

Formal programmes worth applying to

1. Arkwright Engineering Scholarship

The Arkwright Engineering Scholarship is the most respected pre-university engineering scholarship in the UK. You apply in Year 11 (S4 in Scotland, Year 12 in Northern Ireland) via your school; if successful, you're supported through the two years of your A-levels with a £600 personal award, a sponsoring company or professional institution, industry mentoring, work experience opportunities, and access to Arkwright networking events.

Timing for the current cycle:

• School affiliation and nominations: from 11 September, via the Smallpeice Trust portal
• Student application deadline: 11 December
• Teacher reference deadline: 16 December
• Application fee: £45 (state schools get 2 free applications, and many schools cover the fee)
• Application involves an online aptitude assessment and a 30-minute virtual interview with practising engineers

If you missed the Year 11 window, the Virtual Arkwright Scholarship Pathway is worth checking; it's funded directly by the Smallpeice Trust for students who weren't matched with a sponsoring company.

2. Engineering Education Scheme (EES)

The Engineering Education Scheme, run by the Engineering Development Trust, is a 6-month programme for Year 12 students. Teams of four to six students plus a teacher are matched with a local company, given a real engineering brief by a working engineer, and spend six months designing, building, testing, and presenting a solution. Some teams have worked on Rolls-Royce gas turbine components; others on Gatwick Airport operational problems.

Key features:

• Access to a university engineering workshop for prototyping
• A 2-day residential at a partner university
• Formal written report and presentation to a panel of senior engineers
• Duke of Edinburgh Skills Certificate on completion
• Gold CREST Award eligibility

You cannot apply as an individual; your school signs up as a team. If your school isn't already involved, ask your head of physics or DT to look into it. Almost 90% of EES participants go on to STEM degrees, which is not a coincidence.

3. Nuffield Research Placements

Engineering fits the Nuffield Research Placement scheme especially well. It puts Year 12 students into 2 to 3-week summer research projects at UK universities, research institutes, or STEM companies. Engineering, materials science, and computing departments regularly host placements.

You produce a report and poster; the output makes you eligible for a Gold CREST Award and Big Bang Competition entry, and gives you a specific research experience to talk about at interview.

Two things to know:

• Eligibility is targeted. Year 12 at a UK state school, with priority for students on free school meals, from low-income households (typically <£30k), first in family to university, or in local authority care.
• Applications open late autumn of Year 12 and close early spring. Check the Nuffield Foundation page for exact dates.

4. Big Bang UK Young Engineer of the Year

The Big Bang Competition is EngineeringUK's flagship national competition, open to students aged 11 to 18 in state-funded secondary education (or home educated). Entries close 4 March each year. You submit a STEM project, and if you're a finalist you're invited to a video judging call, then possibly to showcase at The Big Bang Fair at the NEC Birmingham in June.

Prizes include UK Young Engineer of the Year (supported by Thales), UK Young Technologist of the Year (supported by Siemens), and cash prizes of £1000 for top finishers.

Independent-school students are not eligible individually, but can enter as part of a joint state/independent school team (in equal numbers).

What matters for your application isn't only winning: entering forces you to produce a well-documented independent project, which is exactly what you'll be asked about at Oxbridge and Imperial interview. Even a runner-up placement is a strong signal, and every entrant gets personal feedback from a working STEM professional.

5. Smallpeice Trust residentials

The Smallpeice Trust runs 3 to 5-day residential engineering courses at UK universities. Rotating options for Y12 include:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Biomedical Engineering
• Structural Engineering
• Nanotechnology
• Girls into Engineering
• Astrophysics

Not free by default, but fully-funded places are available for students who need them; apply when you book. Courses launch late autumn and fill quickly. Practical, university-based, with lectures from academics and hands-on lab or workshop sessions.

6. UKESF Insight into Electronics (free Arduino kit)

If your engineering interest leans electrical, electronic, or computer-adjacent, the UK Electronics Skills Foundation's Insight into Electronics programme is free, open to UK students aged 14 to 18, and posts you a free Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino if selected. Sign up via this form.

Self-paced modules cover microcontrollers, sensors, and programming. The real value is that the kit is yours to keep, so you can go beyond the modules and build a project of your own: a temperature logger, a light-following robot, an ultrasonic distance meter. A project you designed yourself ("I built X to measure Y and found the largest error came from Z") is exactly what interview tutors want to hear about.

University events open to anyone

The highest-value / lowest-effort category. Free, mostly no formal application, and they give you something specific to bring up at interview.

Cambridge Engineering Summer School: A fully-funded 4-day residential for Year 12 state-school students. Taster lectures, practical activities at the Department of Engineering, transport, accommodation, and meals all covered. This is one of the best free things a Y12 engineering-minded state-school student can get.

Cambridge Engineering Open Days: The Department of Engineering runs open days in early July (10 to 11 July in 2026) with lab tours across all six engineering divisions, sample lectures, and Q&A with current students. Parents welcome.

Cambridge CEB Open Day: If chemical or biotechnology engineering is one of your options, the CEB open day runs on the same July dates.

Oxford Engineering Science Open Days: Two university-wide open days in early July, plus a September open day. Includes departmental sessions, admissions guidance for the Engineering Science course, and Q&A with current undergraduates.

Imperial Headstart summer school: A residential engineering course spanning 8 of Imperial's 9 engineering departments. Rigorous, and gives you an accurate feel for what Imperial teaching is like.

EDT Insight into University (formerly Headstart): Broad engineering summer schools at UK universities including Birmingham, Sheffield, Loughborough, Bath, Leeds, Nottingham, and Oxford (Materials). Typically 3 to 5 days, residential or virtual, with bursaries available.

Your nearest engineering department. Every UK university with an engineering course runs some form of outreach, taster mornings, or weekend workshops. Check the "for schools" or outreach pages at Bristol, Manchester, Southampton, Sheffield, Bath, Loughborough, Warwick, Nottingham, Strathclyde, and Edinburgh in particular.

Why these matter: at interview, "I attended the Cambridge Engineering Summer School and got to try wind-tunnel testing; I was surprised how much the turbulence at low speeds mattered..." is a paragraph a tutor will read all the way through. Vague statements about "loving engineering" are not.

Volunteering and hands-on activities that strengthen an engineering application

Engineering isn't a shadowing subject in the way medicine is; the equivalent activities involve either building things yourself or teaching the fundamentals to someone else.

Greenpower Formula 24+ team

The Greenpower F24+ electric car challenge is the most engineering-specific extracurricular on this list. Teams design, build, and race an electric single-seater car at motorsport venues including Silverstone, Goodwood, and Castle Combe. The F24+ category is aimed at sixth forms, colleges, universities, and apprentices; races are 60 minutes long and reward efficiency and team tactics as much as raw speed.

Two options:

• Join a school team if one already exists (about 700 UK schools participate)
• Start a team using a Greenpower kit car (Formula 24 kit) or design your own from the regulations

You'll cover aerodynamics, drivetrain, chassis, suspension, and electronics; every one of those is a paragraph you can write about. If nothing similar exists at your school, starting a team from scratch and finding a corporate sponsor is exactly the kind of initiative Oxbridge admissions tutors mention when they explain what stood out about strong applicants.

Tutoring maths or physics

Tutoring GCSE students in maths or physics does three things at once:

• Forces you to understand fundamentals properly, which is far more useful for the ESAT than passive revision
• Demonstrates communication, which Oxbridge and Imperial interviews explicitly test
• Gives you honest social impact to write about

Options:

• Action Tutoring: Volunteer with disadvantaged pupils, 1 to 3 students at a time. Main scheme is 18+.
• RefuNet: Online subject tutoring for refugees. 18+ with DBS check.
• Refugee Education UK: Mentoring young refugees through the UK education system. 18+.
• Your own school or a local secondary: the easiest under-18 route. Most schools will happily connect a strong Y12/Y13 with a Y10/11 struggling with GCSE maths or physics.

Write about it honestly. "I tutored a Year 10 through GCSE moments and realised I'd been solving problems by memorising formulae rather than by properly understanding torque" is a paragraph a tutor will actually read.

STEM Ambassador visits and local industry site tours

Engineering is an industrial subject, and getting into an actual working plant or workshop, even for a day, changes how you talk about it. Options worth chasing:

• STEM Ambassadors: Ask your school to book a STEM Ambassador with an engineering background. Many are working engineers who will happily arrange careers talks or site visits at their company.
• Local engineering firms. Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Airbus, JCB, Dyson, Ricardo, McLaren, Thales, Siemens, and the National Grid all have education outreach teams. Write to your nearest site's community engagement address in September.
• Local infrastructure sites: water treatment works, waste-to-energy plants, wind farms, and rail depots all run occasional open days through their council or regional STEM hub.

Practical route: pick the 3 to 5 nearest engineering employers to where you live, find their community-engagement or STEM-outreach page, and email in September asking whether they run Y12/Y13 taster days or site tours. Even a "no" reply demonstrates the initiative admissions tutors talk about; and half the time, someone will point you at a working engineer willing to spend 30 minutes on a call, which is far more useful than another certificate.

Making things (your workbench matters more than any certificate)

If you can't get on any of the programmes above, build something in your bedroom or your school workshop. A working project (a 3D-printed robot arm, a wind turbine you designed and tested, a musical instrument, a bicycle repair jig) is often the strongest single item in an engineering personal statement. Cambridge Engineering interviews in particular are famous for turning into a 15-minute conversation about the applicant's project.

You don't need expensive equipment. A £30 Arduino, a £10 tape measure, and a notebook full of your working out will show more engineering than most certificates.

Writing about engineering

Writing forces you to understand a design or a process more deeply, and gives admissions tutors something specific to actually read.

Young Scientists Journal: UK-based, peer-reviewed, student-run, for authors aged 12 to 20. Rolling submissions, free. Accepts:

• Original research articles (if you've done a Nuffield placement or an independent project)
• Review articles (a survey of a topic, accessible starting point)
• Blog / magazine articles (600 to 1500 words on a topic you care about)

The review or blog route is the realistic starting point for most Y12/Y13 students.

Ingenia magazine: The Royal Academy of Engineering's flagship publication, aimed at a general audience but with proper technical depth on specific engineering projects. Free online. Not primarily for sixth formers, but reading it will teach you how professional engineers describe their work, which is invaluable when you're writing your personal statement.

Engineering and Technology magazine: The IET's magazine, free with IET student membership (which is free itself for anyone considering an engineering degree). Excellent news-and-analysis format.

Your school's engineering or science newsletter: Or start one. Almost a cheat code for an engineering application:

• Costs nothing
• You control the content
• Editing a publication is a leadership signal without you having to claim leadership
• You can write about whatever you actually find interesting: a project you built, a bridge collapse case study, a paper on a novel material, a factory near you

A Substack, personal blog, or LinkedIn works too. What matters is that when a tutor googles your name in November, they find something.

One warning: don't write about engineering you don't properly understand. Vague articles on "the future of AI in engineering" that recycle press-release tropes are worse than nothing. Pick a specific system: the linkage on your bike's rear derailleur, why steel is used for I-beams rather than aluminium, the physics of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, how a Formula 1 rear wing generates downforce, why lithium-ion batteries thermally run away. Draw a diagram. Work through one calculation. Then write about it.

How to write about all this in your personal statement

Don't list all of it. Pick one, maybe two things and go deep. A tutor would rather read:

"For our EES project I was on the team designing a low-cost sensor for detecting failures in a Rolls-Royce turbine bearing. I got stuck on filtering the vibration signal from the motor noise, and after two weeks of trying moving averages I realised what I actually needed was a bandpass filter around the bearing's characteristic frequency, which..."

than:

"I completed the EES programme, entered the Big Bang Competition, tutored GCSE maths, attended a Cambridge summer school, and used Isaac Physics regularly."

The former shows an engineer thinking; the latter shows someone who read a UCAS advice article.

The best applications also connect their extras: the Greenpower project led to a specific question about motor efficiency which came up at a Smallpeice residential which then made the applicant curious about the physics of electric drivetrains - ensure your PS flows well.