Preparing for postgraduate study in Chemical Engineering

We’re delighted to welcome you to the Chemical Engineering community at the University of Southampton. You’ll be supported, challenged and encouraged throughout your master’s programme to reach your full potential.

Before you enrol (subject to satisfying any conditions of your offer), here are some useful tips, advice, and guidance to help you prepare for your master’s degree.

If you have any questions at all, we’re here to help. Please contact the MSc Admissions team at admissionspgt.eps@soton.ac.uk or you can email Dr Mohamed Hassan, the MSc programmes Director mghs1v19@soton.ac.uk

Advice for international students

You need to reach 6.5 at the IELTS (or an equivalent English qualification) to apply for the Tier 4 visa required to study in the UK. If you have not taken the test, please do so as soon as possible. Often it takes more than one attempt to reach the minimum required.
If you reached 5.5 at the English test, you can enrol on a pre-sessional English course before joining the MSc programme. These short but intense sessions help you reach the necessary 6.5 level and prepare you for your study. For details about these courses see General English for Academic Purposes Pre-Sessional Programmes
Even if you have the necessary English qualification, you may need to improve your grasp of technical English as you will need to be familiar with chemical terminology in English. To improve you can read a Chemical Engineering textbook in English (see list below), read research articles in English, or read Chemical Engineering magazines in English such as:
- The Magazine - Chemical Engineering www.chemengonline.com
- www.thechemicalengineer.com
- The Chemical Engineer – IchemE www.icheme.org

Chemical Engineering knowledge

If you have studied an undergraduate degree not specifically focused on Chemical Engineering, e.g Chemistry or a related applied science or engineering, may you need to improve your core Chemical Engineering knowledge. We strongly advise you to do so using the following textbooks.

Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes by Richard Felder and Ronald Rousseau
Reaction Engineering Octave Levenspiele
Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering V 1-6
Process Control - Corripio - Principles and Practice of Automated Process Control
Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering Warren L. McCabe

Our BEng/MEng Chemical Engineering course demonstrates the level of knowledge you will need for the MSc Advanced Chemical Engineering. Have a look at the course content here .

Module choice

Our MSc programmes have compulsory and optional modules. You will be automatically enrolled on all compulsory modules but you will need to enrol online (details on how to do this will be sent to you once you have completed your registration with the University of Southampton) for all optional modules. Here are some tips to help you to choose your optional modules:

Ensure you have chosen enough optional modules to meet the required number of credit points for the MSc programme (this will be shown on the enrolment portal).
Choose modules in the area of Chemical Engineering you want to specialise in but make sure you have the necessary background knowledge as mentioned in the previous section. Some of our elective are listed below.

CENV6141	Bioenergy
CENV6090	Energy Resources and Engineering
CHEM6158	Reaction Engineering in Micro- and Meso- Scale Flow
CENV3059	Urban Water and Wastewate Engineering
ELEC6204	Microfluids and Lab-on-a-Chip

Preparing to come to Southampton

Once you have accepted your offer and registered with the University of Southampton, you will receive additional information packs. In the meantime, we suggest you visit the following webpages to get a feel for what it will be like to live and study here: