Placements - Fees?

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Hi.
I've applied for International Relations with Politics and received an offer from Bath. But I'm currently doing A level and waiting to join Bath in the next academic year. There is a lack of information on the website about placements. I would like to ask some questions and hope someone will help me because I'm really confused. I know that the university is 3 years but with placement it will be four. Actually before I thought I would be doing a placement while studying in the third year but now I found that it is incorrect. So the university will be 4 years in total right? Also, are we selected by employers on the basis of our grades at the university or there is also other factors that they consider when they make a selection? Can we send our CVs wherever we want or we have only one chance? Actually I'm not sure wether I'll do a placement or not because as I said I thought it is only 3 years including placement. I know that it has many benefits, theoretical knowledge is not enough to get a good job therefore placement provides
us with empirical knowledge wich will helps us in the
future. But is it really worth to do a placement? What happens after a placement year? Thank you in advance.
Sorry for lots of questions :frown:

University of Bath

Bath

Reply 21

RibenaRockstar

Original post by Zulfiyeva Nargiz

The way I look it it, above all else - the first year of my career will be very badly paid (I want to go into media/PR/politics/not sure which yet, but it'll be badly paid!) so I want to get that first year out of the way while I can use my maintenance loan to help me live.

Also for UK students the fees for placement year are less than the amount we'd receive for maintenance, so in effect you're making a profit from the government =D

Reply 22

anony.mouse

I was looking at doing a 4 year course (not at bath) incuding a year in industry. I can't remember where it was, but we would have to pay half our tuition fees for that year ...

Reply 23

littlemiss-sunshine

Original post by Zulfiyeva Nargiz

Definitely worth it to do a placement, gives you such an advantage to have a serious chunk of work experience when applying for graduate jobs - I wouldn't have got the job I've just been offered if I hadn't done a placement year. Also a lot of employers may offer you a graduate job when you finish the year, depending on how well you performed throughout the year and company policy. You do still have to pay tuition fees but they're lower than usual (can't tell you exactly how much as I'm paying the old level of fees so my placement was £875 compared to a usual £3000/year or so), and you can still get student finance although again it is lower than usual (unless you get a placement in London and want to apply for higher student finance because of that, but I didn't see the point because I was being paid and you have to pay the loan back once you graduate anyway!)

Employers mostly use your module grades from first year at university to decide who to interview, plus other things on your CV like work experience and then whether you get a placement with them will generally depend on how well you perform at interview/assessment centre. You can apply to as many as you want but my department have a rule (can't be sure if it's the same for IR) that you have to accept the first place that make you an offer.

I know it's an extra year at uni but I can't emphasise enough how good an opportunity a placement year is - financially as RibenaRockstar said there's usually a positive effect overall (assuming you get paid), it's nice to have a break before going back into final year (it feels so amazing to have a whole year with no exams!) and statistically (again this is for my course but I would be surprised if it doesn't apply elsewhere) people do better in their final degree mark having done a placement than without.

Reply 24

RibenaRockstar

Original post by anony.mouse

I was looking at doing a 4 year course (not at bath) incuding a year in industry. I can't remember where it was, but we would have to pay half our tuition fees for that year ...

The UK Government has capped tuition fees for placements at 20% of the total from now on, so for us at Bath £1,800. Which is still a lot give you're not actually AT the uni... but still.

Reply 25

Zulfiyeva Nargiz

Thanks a lot for a detailed answer. It really helped me a lot. Now I roughly know how it works. When should we apply for a placement? In second year? Also if we go to another country to do a placement does the university or the employer help us to find an accommodation?

Reply 26

littlemiss-sunshine

Original post by Zulfiyeva Nargiz

Yep during second year. The university doesn't really give any help on finding accommodation whether you stay in the UK or go abroad. As far as I know employers don't help in the UK but I don't know about abroad - I'm sure it's something you could ask the HR department about if you got a placement abroad.