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, riskier projects 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 of 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.