This admissions test is taken for some Cambridge courses.
Last updated: 9 months ago
The Engineering Admissions Assessment (ENGAA) is a pre-interview assessment that’s considered as part of your application to study Engineering (as well as Chemical Engineering via Engineering) at the University of Cambridge.
Here are some general resources related to the Engineering Admissions Assessment (ENGAA). Use this page as a hub to branch off and use other resources!
Because most applicants receive high grades in school, the ENGAA helps Admission Tutors assess the academic potential of candidates who may look similar on paper. Although the ENGAA is an important part of your application, it’s used alongside other aspects of your application to assess your suitability for the Engineering course, so it isn’t the be-all and end-all of your application. Nevertheless, with sufficient practice and understanding of the test structure you can become more confident in your abilities when sitting the ENGAA.
The ENGAA is a two-hour long pre-interview exam that is wholly multiple choice and is designed to assess how Engineering applicants apply their existing knowledge and problem-solving skills to potentially unfamiliar situations.
A video about the ENGAA from Cambridge can be found here 🔗.
To take the ENGAA, you must be registered to take the test at an authorised admissions centre. This is normally your school or college. If you’re not able to do this, you can find an authorised test centre here 🔗, or your school/college can apply to become a test centre 🔗 by the 15th of September 2023.
The registration deadline for the test is the 29th of September 2023 at 18:00 (BST).
In 2023, the ENGAA will be sat on the 18th of October.
A summary of the important dates can be found here 🔗.
It's important to note that the ENGAA will no longer be used from 2024. The last time the ENGAA will be sat is October 2023. More information about these reforms can be found here 🔗
All applicants for Engineering (H100) or Chemical Engineering via Engineering (H810) are required to sit the ENGAA. If you are a mature student applying to a mature college you may be invited to sit an at-interview written assessment instead of the ENGAA. In addition to the ENGAA, some colleges require applicants to sit an additional college-set written assessment at interview. Currently, these colleges are only Trinity 🔗, however the college you are applying to will let you know if this is the case.
Please refer to each college’s website for further information on these at-interview assessments and the typical interview structures.
The ENGAA consists of two sections; Section 1 and Section 2, which are both 60-minute long, no calculator multiple-choice papers.
Section 1 contains Mathematics and Physics multiple-choice questions, and is split into two parts:
Section 2 contains Advanced Physics multiple-choice questions. There are 20 multiple-choice questions in this section, which you are given 60 minutes to complete. As such, you have slightly more time to answer questions in Section 2 (3 minutes on average) when compared to Section 1 (90 seconds on average), but the questions in Section 2 are designed to be more complex and require more creative thinking skills.
The ENGAA is supposed to cover content which you are familiar with from your A-level studies. However, there may be some topics in the ENGAA specification which you may have not covered yet or still struggle with. It is recommended that you cover these topics thoroughly before sitting the ENGAA. Please refer to this link 🔗 in order to find the most up-to-date test specification. Here is the 2023 specification 🔗 🌟.
Similarly to many other pre-interview assessments at Cambridge, the ENGAA is graded on a scale from 1.0 to 9.0, where the average candidate is expected to score a 4.0. There is no set score necessary to be invited for interview as it varies from college to college, and the distribution of ENGAA scores may vary from year to year.
Past papers are probably the most important resource when preparing for the ENGAA. A specimen paper and all past papers for the ENGAA are provided on the University of Cambridge’s Engineering website 🔗, and are an invaluable resource when preparing for the assessment. Because the number of ENGAA past papers is limited, you can also attempt Physics Aptitude Test (PAT) 🔗 past exam papers for revision, which is the assessment sat by applicants for Physics, Material Sciences, and Engineering at Oxford. The PAT is less time-pressured than the ENGAA, but the questions are slightly harder.
Below are some additional resources which discuss how best to prepare for the ENGAA:
This video 🔗 outlines the basics of the ENGAA, as well as tips and tricks when preparing for it.
This video 🔗, which is a follow up to the previous one, explains the approach to solving some past ENGAA questions.
This article 🔗 outlines some tips in preparing for the ENGAA.
Here are some tips and tricks from current Cambridge Engineering students on how to ace the ENGAA. Remember, these are just personal opinions, so take them with a pinch of salt!
Since there is no penalty for an incorrect answer, I would recommend guessing answers if you feel that you’re running out of time. You might also want to leave more difficult questions to the end in order to pick easy marks first, seeing as all questions are weighted equally.
You definitely don’t need to spend money on external resources to prepare, especially as they are often not affiliated with the test. Isaac Physics 🔗 is a great website where you can find physics and maths questions in a similar style to ENGAA questions.
Time management and fast calculation are key, so make sure to practice some full practice papers under timed conditions instead of just attempting single questions.
Because the ENGAA is a fairly new exam, there aren’t many past papers available, so make sure to use them wisely! I personally started my revision by attempting one of the ENGAA papers under timed conditions to gauge my capabilities and areas for improvement, and only towards the end of my revision did I attempt the remaining ENGAA papers.
Some preparation resources which I found useful were Professor Povey's Perplexing Problems 🔗, which was a puzzle book geared towards university applicants, and iWantToStudyEngineering 🔗, which is a website that contained lots of practice questions.
Don’t worry if you don’t finish all the questions in time -- the ENGAA is designed to be difficult and most applicants are in the same boat as you.