Vacation Student - ACA Aduit Review

I enjoyed my internship as it was relevant to my chosen career path. It was varied, exciting and I met many fantastic people. The best part of the internship was being given a high amount of personal responsibility when working on the projects I was assigned to.

I felt very valued by the people I worked with. When attending a practice audit tender, for example, I suggested ways in which the pitch could be improved and researched the client before giving more suggestions. These suggestions were taken on-board and I felt very valued because of this.

I was assigned a buddy from the beginning and he was very good at guiding me through work that I didn't always understand (I didn't study accountancy!). He also made me feel very welcome and introduced me to the whole team

I was very busy most days - especially on client sites. I was often assigned challenging (but highly rewarding) work that I could see made an impact on the project and was valued by the team.

I was given a lot of responsibility from day one. Some of the tasks I found very exciting - for example attending conferences and contributing in certain ways. Also, the work that I did was majority unsupervised which was a great way to learn.

The work I did was not relevant to my degree subject (Physics) however I certainly got to use the skills that I gained from my degree in the job (critical thinking, problem-solving etc.).

The atmosphere was generally hard-working but was also relaxed and everyone I met was very friendly and approachable.

It was very well organised as I had different projects and tasks nearly every day. Some of these involved travelling to parts of the country to work on a client site or to be involved in a pracice tender.

I feel they invested a lot of resources into me as they gave me responsibilities that would be expected of a graduate trainee and guided me very efficiently throughout my tasks. Also, the regular feedback I received was very helpful.

They are very appealing! The qualification I hope to gain from them (ACA) is very highly valued by employers and progression is very organized and logical within the firm itself.

Several nights the firm paid for employees to attend socials (day at the dog-racing track or paying for drinks at a local bar) which was very enjoyable.

Bristol is relatively cheap (compared to London) but sometimes eating out can be expensive.

There were some clubs/good bars in the central area but it wasn't always cheap (drinks past a certain time can especially expensive in clubs, for example).

There weren't many sports clubs or societies were I was based but there were plenty of good socials.