University Placements

Soldato
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I've just successfully secured a placement for my sandwich year at Northumbria University doing Computing Studies. I was wondering where other students are heading off to and have been over the years in industry?

I'll start off the thread off:

University: Northumbria University
Course: Computing Studies
Placement: Sanofi Aventis, North East

Also, if you've done the placement, what did you think of it? Did you return to the company after graduation?

BeatMaster :D
 
Northumbria University ey...

watch out for dave harrison or whatever his name is

OPPS. i read it wrong, you probably already "watched" out.

i cant wait for a placement year, just want to get involved somehow
 
On my placement at the moment, i'm an IT techician in a high school, and I also visit 6 primary schools during the week to fix stuff and teach kids. The money is great and i'm enjoying it. And with it being in a school the holidays rock! :cool:
 
I did my placement for a company called SMi Group Ltd as Multimedia Executive/Event Technician, funny thing is two of my house mates who were also on placement there were also from Northumbria Uni, doing marketing mind ;) Hope your placement goes well, mine did, and I loved it (especially because it was in London :D) It's a great year out, and it sets you up for the final year like you wouldn't believe (trust me uni is all over for me on the 15th May :D:D

Kiz
 
Doing my placement from Plymouth Uni at the moment, working in finance. It's.. not too bad. Pretty useful for the course and the cash is nice.
 
I failed at getting a placement (also at Kent) ;). But I recently got offered a graduate job at Fidesa so I'm not too bothered about it..
 
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I'm at Staffordshire University, studying Software Engineering.

I've secured a placement with Open GI, part of Open International. I'll be assisting in the development and updating of insurance quoting engines :)

Bring on 2nd July, I can't wait to get some good hands on experience :D
 
Congratulations :)
I'm not doing a placement - I just didnt want to put off graduating by another year, plus I've got a career goal and a placement wouldn't help it!
 
University: University of Surrey
Course: Physics
Company: Mitsubishi Electric

I found the placement year invaluable. I never wanted to work in any of the typical physics careers (lecturer, defence, nuclear industry and medical physics) so the industrial placement gave me a chance to broaden my skills. I got to learn a proper (i.e. not FORTRAN) programming language, which proved useful in my final year at uni and beyond. I got given a project for the entire year researching image processing techniques for surveillance systems and found it very interesting.

I didn't go back to the same company after my degree. It was an option but I decided that R&D wasn't my cup of tea.

Doing a placement year was pretty much compulsory at Surrey. It's little wonder that they had by far the highest employment rate out of any UK university when I was there.
 
calnen said:
Congratulations :)
I'm not doing a placement - I just didnt want to put off graduating by another year, plus I've got a career goal and a placement wouldn't help it!
You'll see, usually it's 10x harder to get a job without any experience after uni :p
 
Can't wait for my placement year, although I feel I'm going to have trouble getting one (am doing Games Tech).

By the way lemmonkettaz your sig's filesize is over the maximum allowed limit, 20KB.
 
touch said:
Im doing Computing at Glasgow Caledonian (1st year atm).

How hard is it to find a placement?

It shouldn't be that hard if you don't have stupid criteria like me (was looking for something close to canterbury. Really not a good place to look for IT jobs), and if you apply for things you are actually interested in. I went to a couple of interviews for roles I really wasn't that enthusiastic about and it really doesn't help in getting the job.. If you're interested in what you'll be doing then it'll be much easier to give honest and suitable answers to questions. You may be clueless like me in my first interview. I found pretty much all the examples I had of teamwork etc. came from the second year, after my first interviews. When the first company you apply to is an investment bank and you have never really done a group project it's difficult to give them any examples and a bit demoralising. Not that I ever expected to get a job at Lehman Brothers.

And make sure you start applying early if you want the investment banking jobs etc. A lot of them have really early deadlines (ie Oct - Nov) and applications are harder later on given that you'll have more pressing coursework.
 
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Secured my placement on monday of this week... fits all the criteria I set for myself, is close to home (<4m) has travel oppurtunities (site's all over europe) and looks a good job. The people i've met all seem top... they seem like they'l be treating you as they would a normal employee (you'd expect that anyway).

Can't wait to get started, going in for a few days over easter to have a look around and then officially start on the 23rd or the 30th may...

So chilled now after all the faffing around of applying to places :p
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Secured my placement on monday of this week... fits all the criteria I set for myself, is close to home (<4m)

4 metres? doing odd jobs around the house and getting paid by your parents doesn't count as a placement :p
 
I applied for three Uni's and got three conditional offers.

Looking to get into Queens University, Belfast - but they're expecting five distinctions from the remaining seven units of my course. So I'll not get too excited on that front.

Placement wise, some of the courses are linked with some decent big names - but that's a bit further down the line.
 
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