• Question: what qualifications did you need to get into your profession?

    Asked by marth050 to Amanda, Ben, Dan, Gary, Samer on 19 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Amanda Lewin

      Amanda Lewin answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      A degree is really useful although its not the only way into my job and my company also takes on trainees who study for a degree part time while they are also working for the company and the company pays for the university fees.

    • Photo: Dan Weatherill

      Dan Weatherill answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      To get onto a research program, you almost inevitably need a degree. Though quite often it doesn’t have to be a really specific degree. I have a physics degree, not engineering, but a lot of my colleagues in the research group have electrical and electronic engineering degrees.

      In our case, the mixture helps quite a lot because our work is right at the border of physics and engineering.

    • Photo: Ben Drumm

      Ben Drumm answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      The route I took, I needed a degree to get my job, and good A levels to get into uni to do a degree…

      That said, you can become a Mechanical Engineer (my discipline) by doing an apprenticeship and then applying for a job as a Mechanical Engineer, which takes longer and (in my opinion) won’t set you up as well in terms of career development (promotions etc.) and these start (I think) around 16 after your GCSE’s…

    • Photo: Gary Boorman

      Gary Boorman answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I got a degree in Applied Physics and Electronics – it makes it easier to get into engineering with a degree. But going via the apprentice route is also very good – you get to earn some money when you are younger.

    • Photo: Samer Kilani

      Samer Kilani answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      For the route that I have taken you definetly need qualifications. As far as I know, all design engineers who work at CERN have atleast an undergraduate degree and a very large portion of these engineers have higher degree qualifications like a PhD.

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