Industrial Placement Student Review

I thoroughly enjoyed the entire year and would recommend it to anyone.

From the beginning I was treated exactly as a full-time employee by both my office and department. I felt my work was as important and valued as anyone elses. I was always invited to social evening gatherings and pub/restaurant lunches. My office would always invite me to tea breaks every day which makes you feel included as part of the team and you get to know everyone really well.

I felt the balance was perfect as at the beginning I had a lot of support from my supervisor, then after a few months we would just have a weekly meeting when I would tell her what my plan was for the week and she would give me her suggestions, although I was always welcome to go to her office and get her advice whenever I wanted. By the end she was on maternity leave so I was directly reporting to the manager of the group and was entirely responsible for my work load, experiment planning and communicating with colleagues cross-departmentally to support the projects I was working on, although again I was welcome to get advice and help from him whenever I needed it.

This depended on how my projects were going. Sometimes I was too busy but I never felt over-worked. Similarly

I was surprise by how much responsibility you are given. After a couple of months I was running all my experiments alone and presenting in meetings to large groups of people.

I feel like I have really developed in terms of both my technical laboratory skills and my personal development, so it will be extremely useful in terms of going back to uni for my final year project, as well as giving me an edge over other candidates when applying for postgraduate studies.

I got on with my office very well. We always go for tea breaks together and the atmosphere is great.

Some aspects were good, like having the familiarisation day and the careers day set up for us. I think the Chemistry department is better in that they all go for a week's training at the beginning. My dept were good as we had a training course in cell/tissue culture and they have organised an IP poster presentation for us. The negative aspects were the handling of our contracts by SRG - there was a lot of confusion over salary and end date of placement, but it was their first year doing it so there were bound to be teething problems.

I feel that on a technical level, they have invested a lot of time in training me in lab techniques - I was always encouraged to speak up if there was something in particular I wanted to learn. I also feel this year has been good for me to practice writing scientific reports, doing posters and presentations etc. The company hold lectures and seminars frequently on a range of topics which I have been encouraged to attend. I have also attended other training workshops, ranging from enterprise thinking to practical fire extinguisher training!

There are no graduate schemes in biology and the likelihood of getting a job at the moment is practically zero. Chemistry have a couple of opportunities but also very slim pickings. There are graduate schemes in other areas like procurement/legal etc. but nothing in R&D unfortunately.

There are 120 students in Stevenage and I haven't had a dull weekend so far. People are always up for dinner/pub/parties any night of the week :)

As I have been living in London it is much cheaper for me, but it's on the more expensive side compared to the rest of the country. I have lived comfortably on my wages and had enough money set aside to go out or go on holiday.

It's not great - there is a (terrible) club and a lot of pubs but if you aren't satisfied with those London is only 20 mins away by train.

Yes, it depends on how much you want to do when you are living here.