The Arkwright Engineering Scholarship Programme

Grosvenor pupils Louisa and Olivia Millar, pictured at a safe social distance from Dr. Vasey following receipt of their invitation onto the prestigious ‘Arkwright Engineering Scholarship Programme’.

Congratulations to Grosvenor pupils Olivia and Louisa Millar, each of whom were recently informed of their success in applying for The Arkwright Engineering Scholarship Programme, a prestigious initiative that aims to inspire the younger generation to become engineers of the future by opening opportunities to them that would otherwise not be possible.

The two girls, who are twins and are in Year Thirteen, were entered for the Programme by the school in October of last year, following which they were required to complete an application process which saw them selected to sit an aptitude test in school in February, after which they were shortlisted for face-to-face interviews, which were due to take place in April at the University of Ulster Belfast, but were cancelled due to lockdown. The girls’ scholarships were therefore awarded on the strength of their application and their aptitude test, rather than the three components that have been used in previous years.

As a gauge as to the magnitude of the girls’ achievement, there were 1546 applications in total for this year’s programme, from across the UK; 737 of whom were invited to interview.  Of these 737 applicants, only 279 candidates were offered a Scholarship and, from this number, only 9 are from Northern Ireland.

For her participation in the programe, Louisa has been sponsored by ‘WSP Group Limited’, one of the world’s leading engineering professional services consulting firms, while Olivia has been sponsored by ‘Crowdstrike’, a leader in cloud-delivered, next-generation services for endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and response.

Now heading into its 30th year, The Arkwright Scholarship, which is funded by ‘The Smallpiece Trust’, provides young people in the UK with a fully sponsored programme of hands-on experience, professional mentorship and careers guidance throughout their A-levels and Scottish Higher qualifications; it aims to break down the misconceptions which some young people may have around working in STEM and offer exposure to inspiring female engineering role models, as scholars get to experience first-hand the positive impact which engineering can have on society. 

A huge congratulations to Olivia and Louisa on their selection onto such a highly prestigious programme; they deserve huge credit for such an impressive achievement and we look forward to hearing about their further Arkwright-related endeavours over the coming months.