I'm also instructing in the engineering school and really enjoy the teaching.I would advise any engineering student to consider the army, particularly if you are set on being chartered because you can do that while you are in the army. Because you do the 18-month civilian attachment you have skills that are in line with the civilian world but your management skills tend to be much better. You can be managing 25 men and women as soon as you join the army and having that responsibility very early on does stand you in very good stead. Whether you stay in the army forever or go and do something else, working as an engineer in the army really does set you up for life.. I did management at university, but it hasn't been massively helpful We had to get up to speed on everything very quickly. The worst bits are the long hours and being constantly in debt. Ten months after leaving university I still owe money - in fact I owe considerably more now! I don't mind though, because I know that something good has come of it."Tristan Cowell, 23, graduated in 1993 from Nottingham.

To date his ventures include forming a Village People tribute-band, The New Recruits; becoming a professional masseur (a money-earner for the ski season); property developing (a six-figure profit "hobby"); and designing a unique Christmas card display device, which he's successfully mass-manufactured under his company ic innovations. After much hard work, and consistent faith in his product, Tristan is now in negotiations with several national retailers to launch it across the UK in 2005. He explains: "Last year, 1.6 billion Christmas cards were sent in the UK alone. I worked out that if 1 per cent of all Christmas cards were displayed with this product, you'd sell over 300,000 of them. The hardest thing, as a young person, was actually getting through to people and being taken seriously. To legitimise myself I set up a limited company and a website." He remembers, "In the early days, when I spoke to buyers, I'd also try to recreate a busy office atmosphere by making calls when my dad was in the background working, and scrunching bits of paper.

I had to be quite cheeky!"Marie-Louise Mortensen, 22, has a degree from University College London and Masters from Oxford University. She and her sister Antonia, founders of Nail Addict, prove that successful entrepreneurialism isn't a strictly male domain. "We lived in St John's Wood and couldn't get our nails done anywhere. We knew that lots of people would demand the service, so we thought it would be a good idea to set up a nail salon." With a bank loan and investment from their mother, Nail Addict was born "It's been really good!" says Marie-Louise "We've been up and running for six months now. Most businesses take time to start up a client base, but because we were dead-on when it came to the demand, we've been really busy."Equal success can be seen in Chester Chipperfield, 21, who formed media post-production company Emak Mafu immediately after completing his architecture degree at University College London. He started doing web design and film post-production at university, and by his final year was working on a full-length feature aside from his studies.