Full-time undergraduate student experience

What is a placement? Should I do one?

All our courses have an optional ‘sandwich’ placement after the second year, which has many benefits:

It will help consolidate what you have learnt in the first two years, and enables you to understand how the knowledge and skills that you have gained are put into practice.
You can gather material to use in your final year, particularly for your dissertation (which is an extended essay or report).
Working full-time with a construction or property employer will help develop your time management and team-working skills which are highly valued by employers.
You will get a better understanding of a particular part of the industry, which will help you to decide what you want to do when you graduate.
Applying for placements and being interviewed by employers is very good preparation for getting a job when you graduate.
Employers see placements as a way of getting to know the better students a year before they graduate (rather than having to compete for the best students when they graduate) and it is quite common for placement students to be offered a job by their placement employer. After all, an employer will learn a lot more about our ability through a placement than an interview.
The time you spend on a placement will usually count towards the two years or so typically required for membership of a professional body, so when you graduate you can achieve Chartered’ status a year sooner than students who didn’t take a placement.

Our Faculty placements team has good contacts with employers in the region, many of which offer placements every year, and the placements and careers advisers will advise you on putting together a strong application.