From India to Cranfield (and SSO!)
Blog by Vijay (student ambassador at Cranfield University, UK)
After studying my BE Aeronautical Engineering degree at St Peter’s University in Chennai, India, I joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for a month and then GKN Aerospace India in 2014 as an intern, then a graduate engineer, before being promoted to stress engineer. I spent two and a half years working at GKN Aerospace. I always had a thought to pursue a master’s degree in Aerospace.
I had visited the UK thrice as a graduate engineer and as a Stress Engineer, all times to the GKN site in Bristol and Isle of Wight. Some of my colleagues there had been to Cranfield and told me a little about it. I also searched online for the top universities in the UK for aerospace and narrowed it down to Imperial College London, Bristol and Cranfield. In the end, the group design project and the course modules at Cranfield were the clincher, and I also preferred the way in which I was able to take aircraft design as an option of the Aerospace Vehicle Design (AVD) MSc. So, on 28th September 2016 I landed at Heathrow Airport.
I live in an en-suite room in Lanchester Hall in a Ground Floor Flat, which six of us share – two Nigerians, two Britons, a Chinese student, and me! We share the kitchen (and the housekeeping staff has told us we’re one of the tidiest flats and we have also been appreciated by the Student Switch-Off Team!) and we take it in turns to cook our best dishes for the others. So when it’s my turn, my flatmates have chance to sample some vegetarian specialities!
When I’m not working on my master’s I have been involved in some activities including the Airbus ‘Fly Your Ideas’ competition, the Cranfield Aeronautical Society, the Student Switch-Off group and the Bedfordshire regional committee of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. It’s a great way to meet people and make new contacts.
