This study investigates how students reason about progression in an engineering programme. Here progression refers to the idea of setting up the educational programme so that learning activities build on previous ones and prepare for future ones, allowing students to gradually develop their competence and ultimately achieve the programme goals. It is not trivial to build progression into education programmes, and in particular, there may be differences between how the educators intended the curriculum to work and students' actual experiences. This study is based on 60 reflections on progression, written by engineering students. They were analysed thematically to identify the aspects viewed as important to create a good progression in the programme. The following categories were identified: teaching and assessment, repetition, making clear connections between prior and continuing courses, realistic progression, personal factors and alternative routes to progression. These findings give us better insight into the students' perspectives on requirements for appropriately creating progression in education programmes. After all, the students are the ones who experience the curriculum design and teaching in practice.