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Surrey  /  Essays  /  Prompt 3

Surrey: Outside the classroom

Part of the shared 4,000-character limit across all three questions; minimum 350 characters per question; keep this the shortest of the three

What else have you done to prepare outside of formal education, and why are these experiences useful?
What it’s really asking

Surrey wants relevant super-curricular and extra-curricular preparation: wider reading, work experience, volunteering, online courses, competitions, or hobbies, and crucially what they taught you that matters for the course.

Why they ask it

This question tests whether your interest extends beyond what you were made to do. Tutors want evidence of initiative and reflection. The trap is listing activities for their own sake. Every item should earn its place by connecting to the subject or a skill the subject rewards.

Three ways in
Lead with wider reading

Open with self-directed reading or learning that shows curiosity beyond the syllabus, then explain what you took from it.

Name the skill, not the duties

If you have relevant work or volunteering, point to the one skill or insight it gave you rather than describing your tasks.

Keep hobbies brief and relevant

Mention unrelated hobbies only if you can tie them to a transferable skill the course values, and keep them short.

✕  Weak opening

“Outside of school I enjoy reading, playing football, and spending time with friends and family.”

✓  Strong opening

“Shadowing a ward nurse for a week, I learned that the hardest skill on the ward was not clinical, it was staying calm while explaining bad news.”

✦ Annotated example · Outside the classroom. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
Outside formal study, I volunteer two evenings a month with a local community repair group, where I have rewired lamps, mended bike frames and rebuilt a wobbling garden gate. 1The work is humble, but it has taught me to diagnose before I dismantle: to find why something fails before deciding how to fix it. 2I also completed an online course in the fundamentals of structural analysis, working through truss problems by hand until the method, not just the answers, made sense. 3When I got stuck, I joined a student forum and learned as much from explaining my reasoning to others as from being corrected. 4These experiences are useful because they sit on either side of an engineer's work: the patient, hands-on diagnosis of why things break, and the disciplined theory that predicts whether they will. 5Together they have convinced me that I am drawn to this field not for the idea of it, but for the actual, careful work it involves.6
  1. 1Opens with specific, verifiable activity rather than a vague claim of being practical, matching Surrey's preference for evidence. This prompt is kept the shortest of the three by design.
  2. 2Extracts a transferable engineering mindset (diagnose before acting) from a modest activity, which is reflection rather than a list.
  3. 3Shows independent, subject-specific initiative beyond school, reinforcing genuine commitment to the course.
  4. 4Adds a small but telling detail about collaborative learning, showing maturity and the habit of testing one's own understanding.
  5. 5Synthesises the activities into a single coherent point about engineering, demonstrating reflection instead of simply itemising.
  6. 6A short, grounded closing that reaffirms motivation through demonstrated experience, keeping this answer concise as instructed.
Stuck? Start here
  • What have you read, watched, or taught yourself about this subject that nobody assigned you?
  • Do you have work experience, volunteering, or a competition that connects to the course, and what was the single biggest lesson?
  • If you mention a hobby, can you name a real skill it gave you that the course would value?
Before you submit
  • Does every item here connect to the subject or a skill the course rewards?
  • Have I reflected on what each experience taught rather than just naming it?
  • Is this section the shortest of the three, leaving room for the academic questions?

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