Sandwich Student Review

AstraZeneca (AZ) is a wonderful place to work. Everyone is really friendly and experts in their fields. You start off slowly, but soon (within month or two) it becomes a serious full-time job, which is excellent if you want to actually learn thing.s

Like I said, everyone is friendly and as long as you put in an effort and actually try to contribute everyone will treat you as an equal.

This was best thing during first month. I did not expect to be guided so much (which sometimes was a bit annoying, but was for the best), but finnally I understood that it actually helped a lot. Even though hearing same things may seem frastuating in the beggining, but they are necessary and help you a lot later on.

Most of the time you are quite busy but its okey because all you do is intresting and therefore time just flies. On the other hand, you have enough time for coffee breaks, which are really valuable things (you later understand :D)

In the first month, I started working for two major projects (both multidisciplinary and largly funded). Altough it was just basic help in the beggining, but it moved on further later on. Also, I have been given to do tasks (like cell replenishing for global cell banks) in the first month, which actually were important for company as it was necessary for supporting other projects/departaments.

Most of the things I did have been very relavant to what I was studying and doing in practical classes. Not only numerious technical skills have been enhanced a lot, but also transferable skills like team working (you have A LOT of meetings) and communications. Worth to mention, you read a lot of papers, which helps, as you become confident with that kind of literature (and of course this literature is most relevant in future scientific carreers and further studies).

You always find people in it, so you can start a conversation whenever you feel lonely and people at my office were very different, so you could have a serious talk with one and a laugh with another.

Beggining seemed to be a bit loose (but that may just be my bias opinion based on expectations) but it kicked off after you and other become confident in what you do.

Money was not an issue. Everything you needed for work (office stuff, printers etc) was provided with no questions. Tickets to conferences were bought by company as well. As of investment considering supervision, each had a personal supervisor, with whom you are most of the time (at least for first months), as well as other scientists, who have occasional trainings to me (and others). To sum up, company was investing a lot of time, money and effort in students.

There are plenty of Case studenship and other opportunities (like post-doc placements) so as long as you work hard I think your chances are quite good.

Everyone was really social, nights out and stuff (same as uni I would say)

We been living in small town (Macclesfield) which was cheap (very cheap I would say) and Manchester was only 15 min by train away so you could get both, big city (expensive) and small city (cheap) life.

We had some clubs, lots of bars, but average age of people was high (~50). But it was good enough considering size of the town, and also Manchester was really close.

Company have a club for employes with many different activities within (like 50 clubs i think). You could easily find what ever you want (and gym was very cheap, 12 pounds a month)