In terms of work experience, it depends how you are planning to study engineering as to when you will need to gain this. If you are planning to go to University, you may find you are able to use the summer holidays between now and finishing your A levels to look for various oppportunities for work experience. Also many degree courses these days offer sandwich courses where you get to work in a placement company for one year of your degree. Here at RR we have many summer & yearly interns and work experience opportunities – you can find information at: http://www.rolls-royce.com/careers/index.jsp

Also as you live in the Midlands, you will find there are many opportunities at all sorts of companies. You could try searching on the internet for key engineering companies in the Midlands that you are able to travel to and get in touch with them to see what opportunities they offer. Not all companies will advertise that they provide work experience opportunities. Also, think about people in your family or parents of friends – do any of them work in the right sort of company that you would be interested in learning more about? Perhaps you could talk to the person who is organising the work experience at the RAF to see if they have any summer holiday opportunities? Or contact them via the website http://www.raf.mod.uk/careers/jobs/ about other work experience opportunities that are coming up.

If you are not planning on going to University, most large engineering organisations will offer apprenticeships that you can start at 16 straight after GCSE’s, so this may also be an option depending on what your plans are.

Overall, I would say don’t worry about not being able to get work experience. Women in engineering are still a minority group and therefore although there may be competition for places on work experience/internships, I’m sure your natural enthusiasm and interest in the subject would help you in getting work experience. Also the fact that you are so interested already when you are in year 10 shows a level of commitment which is not always present in many people your age, so the fact that you have several summer holidays ahead of you where you can look for work experience is a bonus. As long as you realise there will be a level of effort on your part to find and secure relevant and useful work experience, then I’m sure you will be fine.

Hope this helps and good luck!

If you live near Birmingham WES will be holding a session on Saturday 18 September at Aston Uni called ‘My Sparkling Career’ and there should be plenty of young engineers there to chat to you about work opportunities in different areas whether you plan to do an diploma / apprenticeship or foundation degree or degree.

I am new to this site so I hope you question hasn’t become out-dated since you posted it…

You will be pleased to hear that there are a good number of schemes to help get people who have had career breaks back into science, including grants for training or conferences, mentoring programmes, fellowship funding etc so if you want to get back to chemistry then you will be more than able to!

I would suggest your first port of call be http://www.theukrc.org/women/how-we-help which lists things that the UKRC does themselves as well as links to other schemes.

There was a scheme called Daphne Jackson Fellowships which would be ideally suited to your situation, however when I try the website I had bookmarked (www.daphnejacksontrust.org) it re-directs to the homepage of the University of Surrey (where it was based), implying that circumstances for the trust may have changed since I last looked ~6 months ago. Someone else might know more about this?

I hope that helps and good luck!

Best wishes
Frances

1) Study the list of staff on the page http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/chemeng/people.html. Then contact them and offer to do work. If (as will probably happen) you get no answer, find out where they work and go and sit in their department and pester them. Do not take no for an answer. Show that you have initiative and determination. As soon as they speak to you they will begin to consider how you might be able to help you.
2) At the same time (belt and braces approach) write to the Institute of Chemical Engineering onlineassistance@icheme.org or phone them pm 01788 578214 and find the Chair of the nearest member group. Do the same with them.

What’s the deadline for the UCAS application?

Regards,

Phil