HND Engineering student, Asher, also completed the Level 3 BTEC in Engineering and the Level 4 HNC Engineering at Kingston College. He says:
What inspired you to choose HND Engineering at Kingston College?
I had been a student here many years prior. As soon as I finished secondary school I wanted to find a college which had a particular strength in engineering. After my search I found that Kingston College had one of, if not the strongest engineering course out of the majority of colleges and universities. I studied on Level 3 in Engineering for 2 years which did not disappoint, then I decided to apply for the HNC (Level 4) because of how good the Level 3 course was, and after completing that, I decided to continue my engineering path and go forward with the Level 5 HND which has been a great top up to help make me a more complete engineer.
How do you feel the course is preparing you for a career in engineering?
I have just completed the course and I can honestly say I feel like I can do anything. The amount of skills and knowledge I have acquired over my past 5 years here has thoroughly prepared me for a career in engineering. The HND particularly helped me become even more advanced and knowledgeable in more areas of engineering. Every year I seem to realise how much more there is to learn in engineering. I feel I am able to do everything in engineering from electric and mechanical work to all the theoretical calculations and projects. The skills and knowledge is too much to list. In short I feel I am thoroughly prepared in a career for engineering.
How do you balance studying with your other commitments and what advice would you give to new students?
Honestly, it does get hard at times as the workload although useful is also very extensive. But truthfully the course does as well a job as it can to distribute the load evenly and if you go to every lesson and complete your assignments in steps or segments like doing one question per week for each assignment you shouldn’t have many problems at all. I did struggle slightly as I am a bit of a last minute student but even so I managed to complete all my assignments to a high level without a large amount of stress.
Can you share a project or assignment from the course that you found particularly interesting or challenging?
I will have to say that every single maths assignment was extremely difficult, or at least I thought so when I started the course. When I read the brief and the tasks I had to complete I thought it impossible because the maths ranged from calculus to computer programming maths and engineering maths and so on. But as I continued my lectures it became increasingly easy and I actually found it quite interesting, especially the computing maths. The maths covers such a variety of areas, not just one section like calculus.
What would you say to someone considering enrolling on this course?
I would say that if you want a complete skillset and knowledge in engineering, you HAVE to know the units taught on this course. These skills are essential for advanced engineering, honestly I didn’t know what this course was going to teach me when I enrolled, but having completed it, without any bias I can definitely say this is a MUST have in your knowledge and skills. I have friends who do engineering in other universities in my year as well who do similar units to this course but when talking to them, there are certain units and levels of extensiveness they do not cover, of course I’m not speaking for everyone but my point is that this is definitely an essential course to complete.
