Which experience explains your interest in mechatronics?
Choose what to say in one short engineering admissions response.
“Explain how those experiences shaped your interest in your chosen program.” (opens the source)
The question
You are preparing a fictional 90-second recorded response for undergraduate Engineering. You are interested in mechatronics and helped build a sensor for a school greenhouse club. Choose details you can explain from the project record.
- Your work
- You built the bracket and adjusted the cable route. You secured a loose connector before repeating the bench test.
- Team work
- A teammate wrote the firmware.
- Observed result
- Readings were steadier in two dry bench tests after you secured the connector.
“Use one experience to explain what draws you to the subject.”
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A strong answer, step by step
Open each step in turn. This is one strong answer, not the only one.
Step 1: Choose one experience
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Build the answer around the sensor and the work you did.
The strong move. One project gives enough room to explain your choice of subject.
List every club role and project to show the range of your work.
Tempting, but it misses something. A list gives little time to explain which experience led to your interest in mechatronics.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I’d use the sensor. I changed the physical build and saw why the way parts fit can matter to the readings.”
Why it works: One project gives enough room to explain your choice of subject.
Step 2: Explain what you learned
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
State the change and the two observations.
The strong move. The record identifies both your contribution and the test conditions.
Say your code made the system work reliably.
Tempting, but it misses something. The firmware came from a teammate. The two bench trials cover a limited condition and do not establish system reliability.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I built the bracket and changed the cable route. After I secured a loose connector, the readings were steadier in two dry bench tests.”
Why it works: The record identifies both your contribution and the test conditions.
Step 3: Check the test limit
In the first damp greenhouse trial, the readings became erratic again. The bracket stayed in place. The team has not identified the fault.
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Keep the dry result and say the cause of the new fault is open.
The strong move. The new result shows a problem under a different condition.
Say water got into the connector and caused the new fault.
Tempting, but it misses something. The trial gives an erratic reading in damp conditions. It does not identify the component or the cause.
See how a strong candidate says it
“The dry tests showed steadier readings. The readings became erratic in the greenhouse, even though the bracket stayed in place. We still need to find out why.”
Why it works: The new result shows a problem under a different condition.
Step 4: Give your reason
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
End with the engineering question the project left you wanting to solve.
The strong move. The experience, its limit and the learning goal explain your reason for the subject.
End with a list of course names you have not checked.
Tempting, but it misses something. Course names alone do not connect the work to your reason for studying. An unchecked list could also describe the programme incorrectly.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I built the mount and worked on the wiring for our greenhouse sensor. Two dry tests went better after I secured a loose connector, and the readings became erratic again in the greenhouse. That made me want to study how mechanical parts, electronics and software work together, and how to test them in the conditions they’ll face.”
Why it works: The experience, its limit and the learning goal explain your reason for the subject.
The answer, in short
- Decision
- Use the sensor project to explain your interest in designing and testing complete systems.
- Because
- You can name what you built, what you saw and the question the project raised.
- What would change it
- A test that varies one condition at a time could narrow down the cause of the greenhouse fault.
Common traps
- Giving yourself credit for the firmware.
- Promising reliability from two dry tests.
Check your answer
- I chose one project.
- I explained my contribution.
- I kept the result within its test conditions.
- I gave a reason to study mechatronics.
Last reviewed Nov 11, 2026