Undergraduate Placement Student Review

I found the placement largely fulfilling: the work was interesting and the company was a good place to work generally. I was lucky to have a very good manager, who paid me a lot of attention and was very helpful, which made a big difference to my experience of this placement and is a key factor in my rating.

I was lucky enough to be in a team where there were many small projects that I could help with: although most of the team's long-term projects were beyond my ability (having done 2 years of study), I was able to help the team and feel valued. A large part of this was that my team themselves were very helpful

I had a supervisor and a manager: I dealt with my supervisor day-to-day, and he was happy to help me with any technical issues or otherwise with my work (I was helping him on a project). My manager was often around, was happy to talk and help whenever I asked, and would actively arrange meetings with me to check that I was happy with my placement

I was given a lot of flexibility with my time, with an objective for my entire placement, and no objectives for each day or week. This sometimes made it difficult to manage a full day properly with no commitments, but I was given the chance to attend some meetings which were interesting and broke the day up.

Naturally, due to the highly technical and long-term nature of the job, I was not able to take a great deal of responsibility - however, I was given a good deal of responsibility within these boundaries. I was given a main project and several smaller projects which directly benefitted the team I was working with.

I think that the skills I learnt will not necessarily be particularly useful in the theory of the rest of my degree, but they are likely to be very useful both in any project work or future career: in my three months I learnt a large amount of proficiency in MATLAB, which is very widely used in industry.

The general atmosphere in the office was good: generally professional, but everyone was happy to help each other and were generally friendly. I was particularly lucky to be in a team that was very friendly and approachable for new employees - one further point is that the large number of graduate placement students means that undergraduates can learn from graduates easily

There is an initial welcome day where every placement student is given the basic information they need - however, there tended to be a couple of small technical issues within the first couple of weeks. However, HR representatives are very helpful when contacted and keep students updated regularly with anything they need to do

The company makes many different training sessions available to undergraduate placement students, covering many technical skills. These can be taken with approval from the student's manager

JLR is very keen to offer placements on the graduate scheme to students who complete undergraduate placements, subject to feedback from the student's manager. This meant that by the end of my placement last summer, many other students had already been given job offers. They will also offer return undergraduate placements.

The social scene was excellent: JLR recommended a place to stay near to the site, where around 90 undergraduates ended up staying. This created an excellent social scene, with nights out every weekend, 5 a side football every week, and many other different events among interns. This also made lift-sharing easy to organise.

The bars, restaurants and clubs around Coventry (where I and around 90 other undergraduates lived) were very reasonably priced, and shopping was very cheap.

The local nightlife was not very wide-ranging (most nights out took place at the same club) but was fun and reasonably priced.

The company did not provide many opportunities directly, but work finished at 4:30, which freed up a lot of time for activities, and having so many undergraduates living together made it possible to organise many activities.