The Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering is a challenging programme for hard workers with strong analytical abilities and plenty of resourcefulness. In order to feel at home in the field of mechanical engineering, you need to love technology, be versatile and keen to solve the challenges that people and society face today.
Throughout this programme you will become an expert in designing, improving and maintaining all kinds of machines, devices and installations, as well as structures and processes. We will equip you for a very broad field of work, teaching you to contribute to many different kinds of innovations and improvements. Some examples include: 3D-printing a ship propeller; making a power plant sustainable; building a window-cleaning robot, or an exoskeleton for rehabilitation processes; developing and applying new materials for lighter, stronger aeroplane wings; contributing to the development of the self-driving car, or the magnetic glider train.
With this Bachelor’s you will become an academically educated and highly resourceful mechanical engineer – an independent thinker who understands the technology our society relies on, now and in the future.
First time at university
When you are a first-year student, you experience many new things. Here we start explaining at least a few of them.
Your bachelor’s takes three years. Every year you will follow four 10-week modules. This means that during the course of your studies you will complete 12 modules. In every module, you will tackle a subject that is hot in society, business or industry. This theme will bring together all the different components of your study: theory and practice, research, designing solutions, self-study and teamwork. A fixed part of every module is the team project, in which you and your teammates apply the knowledge you have acquired to a current challenge and design a workable solution. This learning method is part of the Twente Education Model (TOM): an innovative approach to studying that you will only find at the University of Twente.
Study points - How do they work? Student workload at Dutch universities is expressed in EC, also named ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), which is widely used throughout the European Union. In the Netherlands, each credit represents 28 hours of work. You need to acquire 60 credits each year.
You will receive credits for every assignment you pass. Your programme assigns fixed numbers of hours to each assignment, project report or exam. In the first year, you need to get at least 45 out of 60 points to be able to continue to the second year.
Did you get 45 EC or more? Then you can enter the second year Our goal is to get you to the right place as quickly as possible, which is why we apply the principle of a binding recommendation. All first-year students receive this at the end of the year. You will receive positive advice if you have achieved 45 or more of the 60 EC in the first year. Negative advice is binding and means that you have to quit the course. Under certain circumstances, despite a too low score, we can still give you a positive recommendation, for example, if we have sufficient confidence that you are in the right place. Do personal circumstances such as illness or problems interfere with your study performance? Student Affairs Coaching & Counselling (SACC) will help you further.
