Having your students submit an Engineering Maker Portfolio is optional, but it is a powerful way to help them differentiate themselves in the increasingly competitive admissions landscape. If they decide to include the portfolio in their application, they should use this opportunity to narrate their engineering journey. This means offering admissions committees a clear and articulate view of what they create, how they approach their projects, and their passion for engineering. Help them create a well-crafted portfolio that highlights their intellectual curiosity, creative problem-solving abilities, technical expertise, and collaboration skills.
Here are some considerations for creating an exceptional Engineering Maker Portfolio.
Tailoring the Portfolio to the Audience
Understanding who will be reviewing the student’s portfolio is a crucial first step. Will it be an admissions officer, or will it be faculty or staff within the university’s College of Engineering?
If the portfolio will be reviewed by admissions staff—who typically have minimal technical background—students should include relevant technical details but also explain their projects in simple, layperson’s terms. Advise them to avoid excessive jargon to ensure their work is accessible to a broader audience. For this group, the emphasis should be on experience, passion, and intellectual growth rather than purely technical aspects. Don’t hesitate to highlight initial mistakes or false starts; doing so can underscore the student’s resilience and focus.
On the other hand, if expert reviewers, such as MIT’s Engineering Advisory Board, will evaluate the portfolio, students should provide detailed technical descriptions. Have them highlight the complexities and technical aspects of their projects to engage these expert reviewers effectively.
By tailoring the portfolio to general and technical audiences, students can ensure that their work is compelling and informative to all reviewers.
Showcasing Selective Projects
Rather than including every project they have ever worked on, advise your students to focus on a few standout projects. Have them select two or three that cover diverse technical skills and challenges. Choose projects that best showcase their problem-solving abilities, design thinking process, technical skills, and organizational abilities.
Students should highlight how their skills have evolved over time and demonstrate this growth. Recent projects that address more complex challenges and reflect advancements in their technical expertise should be included.
For collaborative projects, have students clearly define their role and contributions. They should emphasize the soft skills they have developed, such as teamwork and communication, since engineering often relies on effective collaboration. For example, if the student is part of a robotics team, as is common, have them distinguish the overall team objective from their individual contributions. They can talk about the team’s overall design and building process while discussing their specific role in the project.
Strategically selecting and presenting projects with this emphasis will effectively showcase students’ technical growth, problem-solving capabilities, and often-overlooked collaborative skills.
Showing Rather Than Telling
Encourage your students to make their portfolio more engaging by visually demonstrating their work. Documenting their work throughout the project makes it easier for them to demonstrate the different stages of the process, from conception to the final outcome. Students should include images and visuals of each project at various stages to enhance the portfolio:
- Initial Concepts: Sketches or early design drafts
- Development Stage: Images of CAD models or prototypes in progress
- Final Outcome: Photos or videos of the completed project
Accompanying visuals with brief, insightful text adds context and enhances clarity. Students should address:
- Project Choice: Why did they choose this project? What was their motivation?
- Challenges and Solutions: What problems did they encounter, and how did they address them?
- Impact: What was the overall outcome or impact of the project?
If a student is submitting a research paper abstract or sharing a publication link, advise them to consider creating a video summary. This approach is often more engaging than uploading research papers, and it provides a dynamic way to showcase their findings.
By visually documenting and contextualizing their projects, students offer admissions committees a clearer view of their design thinking, problem-solving skills, and overall learning experience and intellectual growth.
Choosing the Right Platform
Help your students select the most suitable platform to showcase their projects. They can build a digital portfolio website from scratch or use templates from platforms such as WordPress or Squarespace. Alternatively, they can create videos and PDFs featuring clips, images, and descriptions of their projects and upload them to platforms such as SlideRoom. For example, computer science projects can be showcased on GitHub, where students can manage and share their code effectively.
Optimizing the Reviewer’s Experience
Ensure your students are providing a smooth experience for portfolio reviewers by optimizing their content. Students should resize and compress images to fit their chosen template and reduce file size. Tools such as TinyJPG can help compress images without sacrificing quality, preventing long loading times for reviewers and enhancing the overall user experience.
We believe that by following these guidelines, you’ll be helping your students create a standout Engineering Maker Portfolio that leaves a lasting impression on their audience, whether layperson or expert.
By Vita Cohen, MA, MAT, CEP, IECA Professional (IL) and Jyoti Jain, MBA, IECA Professional (CA)