Engineering apprenticeships

hi all

just wondereing if anyone went down this route after school 6th form and what the expierence was like? where did you do it? what area of engineering?

and any other info

thanks alex

Didnt go down the apprenticeship route but I instead took a year out before uni and got a job with rolls royce through year in industry

http://www.yini.org.uk/http://www.yini.org.uk/

worse thing i ever did was stay at 6 form and not get an apprenticeship :sad:

What type of engineering are you intrested in getting into?

Im in my final year of doing one and its rubbish. Your going to find it hard to find one at the moment aswell with so many engineering companys making employees re-dundant at the momment. The engineering industry isnt a very nice place to work at the moment. I went to a college with alot of aprentices from large companys suchs as GKN drive line, goodrich etc. most of the companys are making alot of workers redundant at the moment. As an aprentice your pretty much immune to redundancys, but it doesnt garantee you a job when your out of your time.

Do urself a favour, stay at school, go to uni..by the time your finished the economy might of settled down and you will be better qualified.

I regret not going to uni even though i had the qualifications to get in.

before you start an uni course or anything like that look at what qualifactions you need, if any, what you need for the job you want to get after, there were a few people what came into the company i used to work for before i started one myself, they had been to uni and got the grades but when it came to me showing them the machines we wanted them to run they didnt have a clue how to use them., All companys will look at experiance over grades in engineering, because if you havent run the machines before why should they employ you.

To me thats what seems to be the main issue between taking the uni or college route compared with an apprenticeship. A lot of employers, as Kenny said, will choose someone with practical experience over someone with the written qualifications from an instituion and I can understand why.

After three years of uni, the most practical work Ive had related to the curriculum was to build a small hinge in first year (the biggest piece of apparatus we used was a pillar drill - the rest was all school-level technical work) and to dismantle and rebuild a small motorcycle engine in 2nd year. That wont help us much when it comes to being asked to operate lathes/mills etc

We have a mechanics club in uni but it hasnt really taken off. The most we can use unsupervised is the pillar drill again, even for the lathe we have to ask a technician to do it (all due to Health and Safety restrictions within the department).

Based on what Ive learned from the past couple of years at uni: if you decide to go down the uni path, make sure you work hard to pass your exams first time round so you can keep your summers free from resit exams. Then you can use the holidays to do internships and placements at engineering companies and (depending on where you get an internship) you can gain valuable experience using machines. You might not have a bit of paper that says youre qualified to operate that machine but the useful thing is that you can.

Fortunately youre also in a hobby that requires machine use from time to time and, even if you dont have your own machines, you will probably be able to ask around for some practice time and instruction on using machines. Every bit of experience you get will stand you in good stead further down the line.

From what I have seen from companies generally university graduates are expected to work excel and not much more. Just work it in new and interesting ways.

I am getting real sick of my uni course and especially my year abroad

*RANT WARNING!*

One of the lecturers I have today told the entire class 7 weeks in well after we can swap classes that none of should have taken it as none of us have the relavent previous experience for the class. He cant speak english much fullstop and wont answer perfectly sensible questions about the work. The notes are a joke and all the tasks we are given have to perfect or else we get them back to correct them. I am now sitting with 6 seperate reports including graphs and technical drawings to do for this class as well as more on the horizon. O and if I dont get the credits for this class i will have to do the equivalent of a full years work in a semester next semester.

Ok sorry to rant and go off tangent but it has been one of those days.....

*pats Gary on the back

There there....there there.

Well I am not an engineer but I am a uni graduate and my partner works in recruitment usually dealing with laborers, welders and certain engineers.

Maybe ten years ago things were differnt but nowadays University degrees are not essential.
Experience by far is the most important thing for emplyment and not education.
However on that argument, an 18 year old fresh from school is going to have a harder time finding a job then a graduate.

I would suggest taking a gap year and looking for work when you leave school. This year working will help you find employment at the end of your degree as well as get you looking forward to dossing about for 3 years at uni.

From the engineers I have spoken to involved in this sport have said that robotic combat has really helped them get the job. This tells your employers that you do this thing for a hobby.

Any hows take care. Feel your pain gary. Had a lecturer specialize in CGI coding and he gave me such grief. When you could make out what he was saying it was mostly rubbish any way.

Difference in opinion it seems..

Quote Maybe ten years ago things were different but nowadays University degrees are not essential.

errr if anything i have been told and also seeing the complete opposite!

In my IT/Business Uni Course, we had alot of mature students in our class (say lots say about 6 out of our group of 30) because companies are sending them back to Uni to get the Qualification.

I agree experience is slightly more than a qualification (sometimes), but at the end of the day you need the paper work... These people were being told, go and complete the Uni course or we need to drop you, as we have all these new students with the paper work and you dont. So another way of looking at it maybe?

If anything, was told paper work is more important than experience when it comes to professional jobs. Specially in the IT/Business/Teaching/Nursing industry now. But experience is just as important that€™s why most courses put you on placements or give you projects with a real client etc for real life experience.

My advice as it was given to me and glad i took it, go to Uni as soon as you can while your in the learning motivation mood. I was told by the careers people something like 65% of students who take a gap year and intended to go back to uni, didn€™t. I€™m glad i went right to Uni, glad i did it for the experience it self, and glad i did it now rather than taking a gap year. But that€™s just me.

And i feel for you also Gary, glad it wasnt me... we had a module in Information Process Managment (annoying module to say the least) and they give us some guy from Iran who speaks English like he just arrived in the county for the first time (even though he lived here for 25 years) and goes off on tangents alot and speaks rubbish and gave us slides to read but were no use really. And then had a go when we only got Bs. And it was a module you HAD to complete, or you re did it again. 40% class failed and had to have him again, woop woop. LOL.

Go to Uni, get a job/experience over summer holidays, do a course with placement if its in engineering. Good Luck! Youll love it!

Mr Stu

Ive got a HNC in mechanical engineering and have completed a Advanced Modern Apprenticeship I have everything but a degree in mechanical engineer and wish I had a degree
Stus right most employers these days are looking for grads they can get maching done abroad or by veteran workers, getting a machinist job these days can be difficult

Go to uni I went and did a media degree and loved my time at uni, go to uni as Stu says youll love it

in a perfect world i would like to do something with electrical engineering and the sort where you make stuff or machines

my work expierence was with a company who service the robots in car plants, i have a qulification in progamming them now that would be a good job for me as i really liked it

the reason im thinking more of going for apprenticeships is beacuse i want to be making stuff and im getting bored of studying etc

thanks for the advice, really appreicate it

alex

Yeah I agree, a difference in opinion.
Maybe depends on the employer.
In computer animation qualifications are not needed. I was not asked once to show that I had done any education. I could of got this job with no degree, A levels or GCSEs.
This is also the same in other companies and widely discussed.

I guess there are certain jobs which require you to have a degree. But there are occasions where I chat with a few friends and the topic of conversation is the lack of use of degrees. Saying Degrees are only useful for special fields......like marcos. I then jump in and tell them that they are completely wrong.

Considering that Stu has told me otherwise that degrees are still needed in certain fields. Speak to some one in the working field that you want to apply to and get there advice. Avoid just speaking to universities. They will just convince you that you field does need a degree and you do need to apply to this university.

Regarding CGI degrees are not needed but it sure helped me. Three years to improve me skills gave me a good start to getting a job. However if your awesome before university then you wont benefit much.

Marco Said - They will just convince you that you field does need a degree and you do need to apply to this university. Hehe yeah heeeeesss sooo right there.

Thing is i know plenty of people who could write a database information process software programn blah balh balh alot better than me, and they neve even completed A-Levels... but they dont have the paper work to back them up to get the job. I have the job as i proved i can do it, they dont have a job in that field as they cant really prove it. Even now when my Job is going to send me out to a clients place to do some computer work, even that company wants to see my CV to make sure i have a degree and im good enough for the job! Its scary!

Some jobs like CGI and Art/ Design its all about showing off what you have all ready done - a portfolio kind of style thing. then fair play. Id hire someone who shows me some ace designs and so on than someone who has nothing but a degree. This subject crops up all the time, even on the other forums im part of. One of lifes things. Some people are lucky and some are not.

But something like Electrical Engineering is a pro job and you need to prove your safe and know what your doing, eg a Degree or high qualification.

But if i had the time and money, id go back to Uni and do ANY course just to get back to Uni. The skills and how it helps you grow as a person is great.

Mr Stu

and then there are the awesome parties, waking up at 2pm with the realisation that you have missed all the days lectures so you get ready to party again, waking up in random locations, waking up with random objects....I could go on :proud:

Well i was at Uni for 2 years doing Motorsport engineering. Same qualification as any other MechEng degree but abit more speciallised to suite.
Reading through course structure I figured there was alot of maths, but maths directed at what i want to do, and along with that some Design work and calculations and testing of racing car chassiss and components.
In actual fact all it was was PURE maths, every subject was another type of pure maths with a fancy name.
The only interesting lecture was thermofluids (thermo dynamics and fluid mechanics).
We did not do a SINGLE bit of practicle to put the maths we were learning into use, or to help understand it.
My main gripe was if you did something wrong, you wouldnt ever be tols what you did wrong, just that it was wrong. Every nmber you calculated meant absolubtly nothing to anyone that was working it out, it was just a calculation that came up with a number in the thousands. Without the practical side of analysing these number and seeing what they physically do makes all this learning pointless to me.
All it means is that i can remember a 5 line equation and punch in numbers!

In the end, I left uni. I had 3 months off my first year and came back the day before my first exam due to an opperation. I passed all but 1 exam.
As my course at Brunel University was the highest standard i could do they stopped any retakes, but due to my circumstances they allowed me to do that entire module again with my others the next year. last year i was off for 3 weeks during coursework and exams with a kidney and brain infection and fell too far behind to be able to catch up and so i left.

Im pleased i left.
I had over 30 hours of lectures a week, all pure maths. No hands on work and i believe i can get a better job just with my experience and 4 As at A-level (100% Dinstinctions in Computer Aided Engineering diploma and A in further maths).

I dont understand why any employer would take on a graduate who just knows equations. They dont know what the hell they mean, but they know the numbers. They dont know how an engine works, they dont know how to tap a hole (both examples of top people on my course).
So how on earth can you be able to calculate and design a component when you dont know how its made?

My rant over lol.

haha gary - i know what you mean. Although it wasnt very often for me, there was physically no time.

quote:

And i feel for you also Gary, glad it wasnt me... we had a module in Information Process Managment (annoying module to say the least) and they give us some guy from Iran who speaks English like he just arrived in the county for the first time (even though he lived here for 25 years) and goes off on tangents alot and speaks rubbish and gave us slides to read but were no use really. And then had a go when we only got Bs. And it was a module you HAD to complete, or you re did it again. 40% class failed and had to have him again, woop woop. LOL.

Ill tell him that! :rofl:

I did the same course as grant did at college (computer aided engineering deploma) then started my aprenticeship

my work expierence was with a company who service the robots in car plants, i have a qulification in progamming them now that would be a good job for me as i really liked it

Thats exactly what i do now.. robot arms look cool the first few times you watch them, but it gets boring real quick.

No offence stu- but the engineering industrie is alot different to IT.. you can learn database work at uni and impliment it straight away at work i imagine.

Doing 10 line equations that mean nothing, then being expected to design components then manufacture them is totaly different after just being shown a page full of maths and never shown into a workshop... most the maths you get taught during an engineering degree is pretty much un-necassairy or never implimented in the real world- as grant said.

I started a degree course with my company at the start of the year.. my company cut my funding when they bothered to read my notes and look into what happened in the lectures because they didnt find it relavent to what goes on in reality.

which company do you work for/with Dave?

thanks for the help people

just to add to what i have said i am currently doing 4 a levels maths physics, graphics and business with the hope to fit in another as level

business is soooooooooooo boring at A2

actually 6 form has been so boring at A2

AS was fun but now its just rubbish

(Message edited by john on November 26, 2008)

i work for LDV Maxus, im an electrical maintenance engineer there. walked around jag, BMW, land rover, all automotive factorys are pretty much the same when it comes down to it.

If robotic/production line/PLC based systems maintenance is what your really interested in, try and get an aprenticeship with cadburys.. there maintenance team are paid pretty well. and im told its a nice company to work for.

(Message edited by mr_turbulence on November 26, 2008)

Rant alert..........

No quals but plenty of varied experience so why cant I get a job?

I see vacancies come, go and come back again - obviously the person appointed didnt work out somehow. My last employer got rid of me after just over 6 months. They didnt tell me or even my supervisor why and a month later took on someone else who lasted 2 days, took on another and they also lasted only 2 days.

Perhaps being over 40 and female has something to do with it. Doesnt matter what legislation there is employers just do what they like.

:angry:

You need a degree to get through the front door, and just common sence to keep your job. If you think there will be any kind of practical work in your engineering degree... think again. As mentioned above its all maths. People wonder why the engineering industry is doing down in this country, its because engineering grads know more about maths then anything pratical. (you will find most engineering grads in finance, as finance companies have realised that qualified engineers are better with numbers then economics students). You dont need a degree but it makes things much easier.

No offence stu- but the engineering industrie is alot different to IT.. you can learn database work at uni and impliment it straight away at work i imagine.

(But its a hell of alot more than database work LOL but i get the principle your looking at, but alot of problem solving and forward thinking is needed for the real world in IT, not just making boring crappy database that some people think i do, cough jonno.)

But totaly agree when it comes to like engineering a car or whatever... or doing art/design work as lets face it engineering a car/robot etc or a project is a bit of art/design, you need hands on practical prove you can make it but even then its a step higher as you have to know strenths/angles/forces etc etc etc, not just paint a picture.

But was just commenting on if he wanted to do electrical engineering, there is more maths/computer side of things you need to learn so doing a Uni course in it will help ALOT, if not needed.

, its because engineering grads know more about maths then anything pratical. (you will find most engineering grads in finance, as finance companies have realised that qualified engineers are better with numbers then economics students). You dont need a degree but it makes things much easier.

--- Haha yeah i read that somewhere... tis true though.

Its a shame because i think car/robot (wahtever) engineering requires more creative than just knowing how to push numbers. So meh.... is a tricky one. But still believe the way this world is going - a degree is a must.

Oh Alex, dont do more than 4 A Levels. The norm is do 4 during AS then drop one and do 3 at A2. Long as you get Bs and an A in the 3 A2s your fine. Dont try and pick up a 5th and spend less time on the others. Stick to 4 and work hard on them than do 5 and do less work. My 6th form let us all down and we attualy all dropped 2 for A2. i did Maths PhysicsIT and Business. and Dropped Maths and Physics. Maths coz i got bored of it, i used to love maths but AS spoilt it for me. Then after 3 weeks in A2 i dropped physics, well half the group did coz of the tutor. But i got an A in IT and Business at AS and A2 and a C in Maths and a D in physics at AS to pull me through which got me something like 280 Ucas points which is just above average for a decent degree course. Think 260 is average.

and AJ nooooooooooooooooooooooo !!!!

I only found out last month (and forgot he reads this forum) that AJ goes to worcester uni which was my uni... and has 3 of my tutors.. and the tutuor i was talking about above is a tutor AJ has... Haha so AJ knows what i mean!!!!

Little John - i found business boring at A2 also, how the hell are you pulling through it, you get bored so easily how are you still there! Well thinks pick up at Uni anyway. A Levels most is book work as most colleges/6th forms dont have the stuff. But Unis, it takes IT and Business to a new level - The real world! thats when its scary!

I remember one module learning how google works and their offices and servers and blah blah it was just pure scary! Oh and how the national banking system works - dont even get into that.. my god.

Thing is, some people slip through the norm net so to say.. if you can find a company that will support you and pay for you to do lots of part time course while your working with them and earning experience, then DO IT!

But if that company chucks you after half way due to whatever.. credit crunch anyone? then your left with just experience which most companies these days due to more Pro Issue laws and blah blah are more weary of someone with no qualifications.

Karoline - maybe try and do a couse in the area of field your in, will give you the edge than just experience which will make your case stronger. Thats what alot of my mature student mates were doing when they were in my modules. 2 of which had kids and full time mum, doing this uni course while they were at school. Now they both have a Degree, did it part time, and i hear 1 has a flexible job at some IT firm and can stil have plenty of time to look after her child single parent. Was a lovely story and a lovely woman to get to know. Learnt alot from her about life in the course.

Thats the other reason uni is great, meet and get to make friends with a wide range of people, different ages etc.

Oh the joys of Life. Sorry about the long post. Bored at work. LOL. But i was once in this situation and i was directed by 3 people to go Uni and 2 to not go Uni, and i had mates who chose not to go Uni and now they are just starting Uni after regreting it after i have finished Uni. yeah they had more money than me while i was at Uni, but the tables have turned.

Mr Stu

(Message edited by stu on November 27, 2008)

Stu, I already have a BSc(Hons)in IT plus courses and/or certification is soooooo expensive. Uni taught me a hell of a lot as to where to find information though in my case it scares off most potential employers - they are more interested in my CSCS card than my degree.

Im not writing off Uni as a waste of time - it helps the youngsters enormously and I thoroughly recommend it for them however if you havnt got your foot in the door by age 25 forget it!

sorry about the database comment stu- i honestly dont have a clue what your degree entailed.

Alex, how strong is your maths? Dont be put of electrical engineering because people are saying the maths is crazy.. its also insane on the mechanical side. Ive done a fair bit of both. If your maths is strong enough to become a qualified engineer go down whatever route you want- none of them are easy.

my maths is resonable now on a2 level, however i dont like it and dont get fantastic grades its just with alevel i learn that part can do it then we move on and when we come to do it again i have forgotten about it etc

Mechanical maths is far more difficult than electrical engineering maths lol.

Mechanical maths is far more difficult than electrical engineering maths lol.
Yeah 10 times fold!!!!

I picked Pure and Mech A Level Maths and dropped mech maths after 2 weeks knowing i woudlnt enjoy it and did double pure.

Mr Stu

You want to put money on that statment Grant? I can think of some seriously diabolical maths to do with control circuits of switch mode DC power supplies! :)

And in turn Grant can give you some seriously diabolical maths to do with mechanics. :proud:

... *backs away from discussion*

LMAO @ Kody!!!!!! Yeah well Geoff you just make things over complicated for a few LEDs anyway. LMAO!!!!!

Mr Stu

geoff is the master with LEDs

the PITA transformation was well good

Not convinced. Mechanical maths reaches a certain point and stays there. Langrangian mechanics, Hamiltonian mechanics, a shed load of fluids equations modeling different things in a not very satisfactory way. Nothing conceptually very difficult and almost all with a basis in intuition (save for some Hamiltonian stuff, Id concede).

Electrical engineering, which I generalise to information engineering, suddenly shoots off into the distance. Perfect packing of error code spheres in higher dimensional space (currently grappling with in degree), state estimation and everything that entails - Kalman and H-Infinity filtering. Got a bunch of discrete logic strapped together and interested in the patterns it could produce? Galois Set Theory gives you the solutions. Why does this resistor produce thermal noise in the way it does? Quantum electrodynamics and the Central limit theorem. Id happily represent information engineering in a maths-off. This all assumes youve got the basics down like Fourier, Laplace and Z-transforms.

Annoyingly, to do anything useful in engineering, you kind of need to understand all of it to some degree or other. You wont get a satellite into Martian orbit without intimate knowledge of Kalman filtering or Quaternions and the Gyro equations. But hell - you can do anything once you understand a problem well enough to know what you dont know.

But whatever - do maths. Maths maths maths. Its incredibly useful - do something mathsy to at least A-level. Ignore what someone said about engineering grads being only good at maths and not anything practical. To do anything really useful or exciting, you need maths. You may be able to get away with just common sense and practical nowse (and there is a huge amount of value in those) in some kind of engineering, but even when I worked in an agricultural machinists, the chief machinist (one of three brothers) could still solve a 2nd Order differential equation - and thats agricultural engineering. If you ever want to do anything from MRI scanners to planetary exploration probes, nano robots to curing cancer (which I think will be solved by someone with an engineering before it is solves by a biochemist - the difference is that we can do maths, and a lot of bio-chemists I talk to concede that and are excited by all the life science departments opening up in engineering departments), you need maths. You would not believe how much and varied maths you need to be able to make a computer be able to recognise a cat from a dog. Its just the tool you need to describe and understand whats going on, and you cant find a good solution to a problem until you really understand it.

Dont give up. Do further maths if you can. Mechanics and Statistics and Pure - anything they do at A-level will probably be entirely subsumed within one year of a decent engineering degree course. If you ever find yourself sitting through A-level maths thinking this is just maths for the sake of maths, its not. Its the basic bread and butter youll use every day. You couldnt even begin to have a point unless youre a professor of something very abstract and pure. And even then - Archimedes, Eudoxus, Apolonius, Plato - all convinced they were doing pure philosophical stuff, wouldnt have much liked the idea of it being engineering.

You can never have learnt enough maths.

If you have not yet got the message,

MATHS.

Suddenly I am thinking about dropping engineering and going to work in Tesco.....

LOL @ Gary. Dont do that, once your in, theres no coming out. lol.

Eddy nice to see your still alive me old chap!

Mr Stu