A guide to first-year Engineering at the University of Auckland

What does first-year Engineering actually look like? Are you expected to arrive knowing how to build a robot? Will every person in the lecture theatre have spent Year 13 casually deriving equations for fun?

Thankfully, no. This guide walks through the current Part I Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) structure at the University of Auckland. Other New Zealand universities organise first year differently, so treat this as an Auckland guide rather than a description of every Engineering degree.

The course list was reviewed in September 2026. University curricula change, so confirm your own enrolment against the official BE(Hons) programme page.

What is Part I for?

Auckland's BE(Hons) is divided into four Parts, which usually correspond to four full-time years. Part I gives everyone a common base in mathematics, mechanics, materials, electricity, computing and design before students move into a specialisation.

You do not need to have chosen your entire career on day one. Part I is designed to expose you to different areas of Engineering and give you enough information to make a more informed specialisation choice.

The current Part I courses

The current sample programme contains eight 15-point courses, plus the zero-point English Language Competency course:

CHEMMAT 121 — Materials Science

This introduces the materials engineers use and why their structure and properties matter. Think less “memorise a list of metals” and more “why did this component bend, corrode, crack or survive?”

ELECTENG 101 — Electrical and Digital Systems

You meet the foundations of electrical and digital systems. It gives students from very different school backgrounds a shared starting point for later electrical, computer and mechatronics work.

ENGGEN 115 — Principles of Engineering Design

This is where Engineering becomes more visibly creative. You work through design problems, communicate ideas and learn that a technically clever solution still needs to meet the needs and constraints of real people.

ENGGEN 121 — Engineering Mechanics

Mechanics applies mathematical and physical ideas to forces, movement and engineering systems. A sound school background in Calculus and Physics makes the transition much kinder, but you will still need regular problem practice.

ENGGEN 131 — Introduction to Engineering Computation and Software Development

This introduces computational thinking and programming for engineering problems. You do not need to arrive as a software developer. You do need to be willing to experiment, debug and resist the urge to throw the computer out a window when one missing character breaks everything.

ENGSCI 111 — Mathematical Modelling 1

This develops the mathematical tools used throughout Engineering. The pace is faster than school and concepts build on one another, so falling several weeks behind is much more painful than asking for help early.

WTRENG 100 — Waipapa Taumata Rau

This is the University's first-year Waipapa Taumata Rau course for Engineering students. It connects study with place, knowledge and the wider context of learning in Aotearoa New Zealand.

General Education

Most students also take one General Education course. This is a chance to study outside the technical core and bring another way of thinking into your degree.

ENGGEN 199 — English Language Competency

This is a compulsory zero-point component. Engineers do not get to avoid communication: reports, designs and safety decisions need to make sense to someone other than the person who wrote them.

What happened to the old courses?

If you have found an older guide mentioning courses such as ENGGEN 140 or ENGGEN 150 as part of the standard Part I structure, that guide describes a former curriculum. Do not build your enrolment around old course codes, old semester plans or someone's assessment breakdown from several years ago.

What is the workload like?

Engineering combines lectures with tutorials, laboratories, projects and a lot of independent problem solving. The exact assessment mix changes between courses and years, but a few things stay true:

• Small gaps in Maths can become large gaps quickly.
• Watching someone solve a problem is not the same as solving it yourself.
• Design and coding work nearly always takes longer than your first estimate.
• Group projects require communication, not just dividing the slides five minutes before presenting.

A useful weekly routine is to preview the topic, attend the teaching session, attempt problems without the answers open, then get feedback while the material is still fresh. Waiting until study break to discover what you did not understand in week three is a classic first-year trap.

Choosing a specialisation

Part I introduces the foundations behind Auckland's Engineering specialisations. Your preferences, Part I results and available capacity can all matter when places are allocated, so do not ignore a course just because you currently think it is unrelated to your future specialisation.

Talk to students and departments, attend information sessions and look beyond the name of each specialisation. The day-to-day work of a civil, software, biomedical or engineering science student may be quite different from the stereotype in your head.

Getting into Engineering from school

University Entrance alone may not guarantee admission. For 2027, Auckland's published guaranteed NCEA entry requirement includes a rank score of 250, 17 external Level 3 Calculus credits and 16 external Level 3 Physics credits. Applicants with lower results may still be considered under the University's current alternative criteria, subject to places, but that is not guaranteed entry.

Cambridge and IB applicants have their own rank-score and subject requirements. Check the entry section for your qualification and intended starting year rather than translating the NCEA numbers yourself.

Practical work does not end after first year

The degree currently includes a 40-hour workshop-practice component in Part II and 800 hours of approved practical work experience across the degree. Start learning about that requirement early. Summer arrives remarkably fast when every Engineering student begins applying for experience at the same time.

Our best advice for Part I

• Practise, do not just reread. Work problems without copying the example beside them.
• Ask early. Use lecturers, tutors, office hours, classmates and university support before confusion compounds.
• Keep your options open. Give every Part I course a fair attempt before deciding what kind of engineer you are.
• Learn to work with people. The degree—and engineering employment—contains plenty of teamwork.
• Sleep occasionally. Being awake enough to think is a surprisingly effective study technique.

First-year Engineering is demanding, but it is meant to teach you—not expose whether you arrived already knowing everything. Stay steady, solve lots of problems, ask good questions and let Part I broaden your idea of what Engineering can be.

By Maggie from MyTuition

Got questions or thoughts to share? Send them to team@mytuition.nz.