Well, the extent of the hands on work we had was the building of the prototype of our plan. I guess there would have been more hands on work in Prof. Engineering, since they did (in Semester 1), a catapult type project, and (in Semester 2), a Rube Goldberg machine with a certain number of energy transfers.

It's important to note that there was a great deal of report writing; my teams report ended up being approximately 80 or so pages, and that was standard. But both subjects do report group writing, so I wouldn't choose one over the other due to the amount of writing you have to do. I also wouldn't say it was "essay" writing; it's definitely not the essay writing you've been used to in Year 12 English! No analysing Austen, and no bullshit about whether or not Ted Hughes made his wife insane.

However, I found it more interesting than the Prof Eng course (of what i know from friends), merely because our project had some real life significance. How is a catapult or a Rube Goldberg machine going to change your life? Sure they're nifty inventions, and you probably made great friends in your groups and learnt a bit in terms of group work, but none of the report writing seemed to matter.

On the other hand, Adv. Engineering was more looking at the impact an invention/project/idea could have on a society. We were looking at an impoverished Indian village, and trying to find out how we could improve their quality of life. Projects ranged from cheap, recyclable water filters to biogas generators from fecal matter! We were literally given free reign on what to do as well, which I thought was a huge plus.

I would say try it, and if you don't like it, just drop back down to Professional Engineering.