The University of Sheffield
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering

Undergraduate Open Days

Spaghetti Bridge Challenge

If you hold an offer of a place to study in the department, we’d be really happy to welcome you on a comprehensive departmental UCAS open day. They’re very different to the pre-application open day you may have attended before you applied to Sheffield. They’re much more in-depth and provide a full programme of activities in the department, designed to show you that Sheffield is a great first choice. We aim to give you a valuable insight into our courses, student life and the city in which you could possibly be living for the next four years. You can visit our student village, the Students’ Union, and the department’s facilities. But most importantly you’ll have the chance to engage with teaching staff and current students, so you get the best information you can about being a student in the department. You can also bring along members of your family, and we’ll run a separate set of activities for them. We want parents to be as informed and reassured as possible about their son or daughter’s move to university.

We’ll give an informal talk during your visit, which will give you details about the technical content of your course and other opportunities, such as studying abroad or the possibility of an industrial placement. We can give you information about the range of exciting employment opportunities open to graduate engineers. We’ll also tell you about the exciting ways in which we teach. As well as the engineering fundamentals, we’ll let you know about the field trips we run, as well as the bigger collaborative projects, such as our Integrated Design Project, which help to consolidate your engineering knowledge and learn about its professional applications. By demonstrating the exciting and unique ways in which we teach at Sheffield, we aim to show you why we’re different to and better than other civil engineering departments. Discovering our laboratories can be one of the most interesting aspects of a visit. Our modern facilities have structural testing machinery, water testing equipment and pioneering geotechnical centrifuge technology.

Part of your visit day will give you the chance to find out more about our central University services: finance, accommodation, Students’ Union, sports and societies, graduate careers – all the other aspects of student life which are equally as important as your education. The other part of the day will present to you our Engineering Experience; a series of taster sessions, which will explain the fundamental aspects of civil and structural engineering and then ask you to take part in a hands-on task to apply your engineering skills. This could involve building a bridge out of spaghetti after learning the fundamentals of structural loading. You will then present your models to the rest of the group to give you a flavour of what it’s really like to be an engineering student.

Lecture theatre

The most important aspect of an open day is to give you as much information as possible about the department, the University, and the city of Sheffield. It’s a very valuable experience and aims to help you in the complex task of choosing your firm and insurance choices through UCAS. You’ll automatically be invited to an open day once you get an official offer from the department via UCAS. You’ll get the chance to book a place online, but for your information, here are the dates for the 2014 admissions cycle:

Although we recognise the value and fun that can be had attending an open day, we realise that it’s not always possible for you to visit Sheffield if you hold an offer. Attending an open day is not compulsory and if you’re not able to come to Sheffield, we can offer lots of useful alternatives to give you the information you may need. This may be an individual visit, a webchat or accessing our online content. Our admissions team are happy to chat with you if you need further advice. Please contact them on civilugadmissions@sheffield.ac.uk or telephone 01142225713.

Our UCAS open days are aimed at people who have applied for a place in the department and are holding an offer. If you’ve not yet applied to Sheffield, please book on one of our University-wide pre-application open days.  If you’re not able to make an open day, you may be able to arrange an individual visit to the department. Please contact our admission team on civilugadmissions@sheffield.ac.uk.