Placement Years

I didn’t take a post-A Level Gap year, preferring instead to progress straight from school to university. However, I chose a course that insisted on my 3rd year being spent somewhere else. A lot of universities will tell you that you have to study, or that you have to work. That you have to stay in the UK or that you have to go abroad, but my course gave me 3 options – work placement in the UK, work placement abroad or studying at a university abroad. I suspected right from the start that I would be wanting to do the middle one, and I was right. I’m coming to the end of my year now, and as of September I will be back studying in Manchester. This is a ...  Read the complete review

Only 3 months, 25 days, 6 hours and 22 minutes left before I complete my sandwich placement….. Ooops….Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you off already!!!! No, seriously it hasn’t been that bad! Its just got to the stage of my placement where I have had enough of the early morning starts and practically-non-existent social life and frankly can not wait to go back in to my wonderful world of uni (excluding the 10,000+ word dissertation that awaits!) But having said that, I have no regrets about doing this placement. With the increasingly competitive job marketplace, I feel it can only benefit you to have some kind of work ...  Read the complete review

Worth it really - Advantages: Money, Freedom, Great CV booster - Disadvantages: You do have to actually work, Can be placed away from all your friends in a totally new environment

So here I am in the middle of my Sandwich, Industrial Placement (or what ever else it is called!) year. I think that I can now give a little insight into the benefits of doing this, as there are many! First of all I will try and explain what it actually is and how they apply to University course, I say hopefully! ** What is a Placement Year? ** In its basic form a Placement Year is a gap from University that is taken in your third year, between your second and fourth years, believe it or not! They offer you the opportunity to apply the skills that you have learnt while at University in a work-based environment. This, to many students, may sound like hard ...  Read the complete review

I spent a almost a year working as a teaching assistant in Hanover, from September 1996 to July 1997, and while I was ready to come back home by the end of my time there, it really was one of the most rewarding and challenging parts of my education, and I suppose my life in general. I’ll admit it straight up, I did not want to go abroad for a year – my German was not up to scratch, I was nervous about moving to a foreign land and leaving my friends and family behind, and I’d got into some difficulties at university in my second year which meant that I was not even sure of being accepted on the placement year scheme. Not the most auspicious way ...  Read the complete review