Program Overview

Our BEng Communications Engineering (including foundation year) is open to Home and EU students. It will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your English language and academic skills.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study four academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory English language and academic skills module.

You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with the Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering. It’s hard to imagine a world without mobile networks, the internet, radio, or audio-visual appliances. Bringing together knowledge from both electrical engineering and computer science, communications engineers drive these communications systems which are so fundamental to the modern world.

You study a wide range of topics in communications, including:

• Radio frequency circuits and systems
• The transmission of digital signals over analogue links
• The transfer of audio-visual information

You also cover traditional topics in electronics, including signal processing, circuit design, processors and software.

We are Top 150 for Telecommunication Engineering in ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2019 and more than two-thirds of our research rated “world-leading” or “internationally excellent” (REF 2014).

You graduate prepared to move into relevant roles across almost every industry.

Programming at Essex

Teaching someone to programme is about opening a door. In your first year at Essex you will study a module that introduces you to programming using Python. We assess your ability to think in a programmatic way in the very first week of term and if you require additional support, we offer classes which will boost your skills and confidence with programming.