Student Profiles
Nick Gowers
Interviewed in his fourth year, studying Environmental Engineering
Nick studied Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and General Studies at A Level.
"I wanted to train as an aeronautical engineer - mainly because my father was in the RAF and I had been in the Air Cadets whilst at school. However, just after I had made all my university applications, I became involved with the Christian Union at sixth form college and decided that I didn't really want to design fighter aircraft and certainly didn't want to be stuck in front of a computer all my life! Thankfully, I was accepted at Cambridge, so all the other engineering options were then immediately open to me. I was not accepted by my College of first choice, but my application was put into the 'pool' which resulted in two other Colleges interviewing me before I was finally made an offer.
Between sixth form and university, I spent a year in industry. I worked in Materials Science research with a large company, working with and testing composite materials.
I found the first two years at Cambridge really beneficial in learning the foundation skills for all aspects of engineering. I particularly liked the integrated design project in the second year where we designed and built a robot to perform a specific task.
In my third year I took a fluid mechanics paper, which I would have taken to qualify as an aeronautical engineer, but I combined this with four civil engineering papers, leading towards specialising in environmental engineering in my fourth year.
My fourth year options include coastal and offshore engineering and foundation engineering. My project for the fourth year is involved with determining whether cleaning up contaminated ground will be effective in reducing ground-water contamination.
I have found the course demanding, but the experience of being at Cambridge has been terrific. I did a lot of cross-country running in my first year, and I have been actively involved with the Christian Union throughout my time here, as well as being a regular member of one of the local city-centre churches near my College. Whatever the future brings, I know that my engineering skills, learned at Cambridge, will be very useful."