Choosing the right project

The projects offered by staff may vary substantially in breadth, depth and degree of difficulty. The most important thing is to shortlist a set of projects that are right for you . Some students are better suited to well-defined and relatively safe projects that provide scope for demonstrating proficiency with a low risk of failure. Other students are better advised to tackle harder, riskierprojects that require a high degree of original input and/or technical problem solving. If you are looking to achieve high marks in your project and, particularly, if you are hoping to win one o f the illustrious project prizes, or achieve "Distinguished Project" status, you should choose your shortlist with particular care. The potential supervisors will be happy to offer advice on the suitability of a project, given your individual background, strengths and ambitions. Remember that it is important to balance ambition and realism when making a choice

Most of the final year engineering project assessors will not have followed the project throughout and will only have a short time to listen to a presentation or see a demonstration. For this reason they will rely heavily the report to judge the project. Also, if in the end your overall degree marks put you on a boundary between two degree classifications, the final outcome can be influenced significantly by the quality of your project. You should appreciate that the external examiners, who play a crucial role in the final recommendation, have only the report by which to judge your project performance.