Placements
Professional experience as part of the degree courses
Two thirds of our undergraduates undertake placements. These are 6 or 12 month periods of employment in bioscience research, administration or management. They give you a chance to broaden your experience and may be a stepping stone to your career.
We run more placements than any other life science department in the UK. Our placement opportunities include top UK pharmaceutical companies (eg GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer), UK research institutes (eg National Institute for Medical Research) and American universities (including labs at Harvard and other Ivy League universities).
We are able to offer a significant number of overseas placements; the majority of these are in the USA, mostly in university laboratories, but a good number are in Europe and a few students each year go to a variety of more exotic locations around the world.
The benefits of professional placements
There are many benefits to be gained from a professional placement. Primarily it is an excellent learning experience and one which is valued by potential employers, especially when you gain a good reference from your placement supervisor.
In addition, the successful completion of a placement demonstrates that you possess more skills than purely academic ones; while gaining valuable work experience you are likely to acquire greater maturity and independence, a broader outlook and a range of transferable work skills of benefit in your future career.
In the modern competitive world, the professional level work experience provided by a placement gives a great head start when looking for employment of for a PhD place. The superb employment record of our graduates is a testament to the success of the Bath 'sandwich' system.