Civil Eng: Why isn't Warwick in the Complete Uni Guide subject league table?

[jifty]

I'm sure I found it in the civil eng list a few months ago because we made a note of it as 6th, but now I can't see it there.

I'm wondering if the lack of a listing might mean it is a more generalised engineering course with specialisation in later years? We're going to the Warwick open day, and noticed that the departmental talk/tour is for engineering, not specifically civil engineering.

Yes I think that’s why. Ds did not apply there even though he wanted a campus uni because of that. He knew he wanted to do Civils from the start.

Yes.

I'm not sure if it's changed, but when dd was applying for engineering degrees, looking mostly at electrical and electronic, the only 'General Engineering' degree which showed up in the rankings for the separate fields was Cambridge- at the time it was the only one deemed to sufficiently 'generalise then specialise'.

From a quick glance, Warwick has shifted their emphasis a bit on their website. It used to be presented more as 'general engineering', rather than listing specialisms upfront. Whether that represents change in their offering I don't know.

We've been to the Warwick Open Day today and the talks confirmed that year 1 is a common year for the 4 main engineering routes. Their presentation highlighted the 6th place Complete Uni ranking for General Engineering in their slide pack.

However, other "general" courses like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham still have a separate Complete Uni ranking for Civil Eng, which makes me wonder if universities get a say in whether that is published or not.

For comparison, Warwick does have a Civil Eng ranking in the Times, Guardian and QS rankings which are 19, 21 and 25 in the UK respectively. For every other uni we've looked at the Complete Uni ranking is a sort of average of the other three. I'm therefore concluding that Warwick's General Engineering ranking of 6th is not necessarily reflective of their Civil Eng pathway. Is that a fair conclusion?

I'm therefore concluding that Warwick's General Engineering ranking of 6th is not necessarily reflective of their Civil Eng pathway. Is that a fair conclusion?

No experience of Warwick but that's how I'd understand it too.

Woukd you be able to ask at the Open Day? Which other Uni's is he thinking of visiting?

@CadyEastman I thought about asking, but it seemed a bit of an undermining question. I probably just need to read up a little about the Complete Uni Guide methodology to see whether universities can "opt out" of being listed by subject specialism.

We mainly went to check out their Civ Eng apprenticeship offering. But they did a good presentation for the general CEng so DS may consider it.

Sorry about that.

What I meant to say was this:

I thought about asking, but it seemed a bit of an undermining question.

*I know what you mean but having done 2 rounds of Open days either DS I would say that at least that question showed that you'd done some reading up on how they are placed and what that means.

I couldn't believe some of the completely stupid questions that some people asked or asked for information at was very easily obtainable on their website.

At Warwick everyone does Year 1 and then specialises in Year 2. My son is doing Mechanical Engineering and that isn't listed in the guide either. But don't worry about that - some of his class mates are getting their year in industry at Maclaren and Red Bull etc. It's a very hands on, project-led engineering course and employers seem to value that.

Did you get any idea what proportion of their intake typically ended up doing which specialism (or I think they can choose to stay 'general')? Maybe they don't get enough takers for civils for it to be included?

I see that one of their choices is 'Engineering Business management' , aimed at those who want to go into the commercial side of engineering companies rather than be actual engineers - I think this has historically been one of their strong points.

It'd be interesting to know how many do which of the alternatives. I think that's a very valid (and not 'undermining') question to ask - if your DC is still interested in Warwick they should email the admissions tutor and ask.

@Sparsely My DD is an engineering student at an American university and they have a similar approach. I actually think it’s a good one, because she started thinking that she wanted to specialize in mechanical and has now realized that she’s more interested in aerospace.

@ErrolTheDragon it sounded like all students had to specialise in year 2, so there was no option to graduate in general engineering. The Engineering Business Mgmt route could only be done to BEng whereas the other routes could be BEng or MEng.

There was one route that didn't have a general first year, because it was run by the Computer Science department jointly with Engineering.

Their website says they can continue with the general approach

warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/undergraduate/general_engineering/

In the last few years, quite a lot of other engineering departments have moved to having a common first year, whereas (from my memory of how they presented themselves a few years back) Warwick has moved more towards specialisation.

Interesting. I don't think they mentioned that in the talk, but maybe I missed it.