Software Degree Apprentice Review

This varies throughout the apprenticeship. Early on it involves doing the more mundane tasks, such as organising and amending test scripts, to get more acclimated to the team and the job, transitioning to more interesting tasks like programming new additions to the software product once your team trusts you a bit more. What stays consistent is participation in daily/every-other-daily meetings to report progress with the team

Absolutely, I have massively gained experience in programming languages I had only used in school, currently using them every day. I have also improved my social skills a lot and become a lot more confident in talking about things I've done both to people I do and don't know. This job has also exposed many of the nuances of corporate work, both the good and the bad. (Such as the variety of managers and how strict they each are with the rules)

It varies massively: The placement work can go from being stuck on testing for a year straight (Unfathomably mundane) to being placed on a smaller team designing something brand new (Interesting and very exciting) The university work was overall pretty entertaining, though the communication between between BAE and UCLan was very poor, with scheduling of lectures almost always being a problem. The diploma was consistently miserable, a lot of very lengthy writing and rewriting about the work you've done and how it conforms to a handful of the 800-odd criteria we're meant to have met by the end of the course

Once you found your way into a team, the organisation was great - provided you kept up regular communication with them about how you're getting on But aside from all that, the communication from Early Careers was poor. Frequently expecting things from us with little to no prior notice, leading to everyone getting upset with each other, was commonplace, though this has improved drastically over the last year or so due to the rearrangment of some staff

Within a placement team (most of them anyway) there are SO many people eager to help, which is fantastic. Support from Early Careers with diploma was next to none, which led to a number of issues and apprentices falling very far behind. However, over the last year or so, this has massively improved with the rearrangement of some staff

I can't speak too much on this one since most of the university material I had already covered during my A-Levels (mainly in computing and maths) but those in my cohort would regularly complain that lecturers weren't very helpful (They mainly just seemed busy all the time) and would only seem to understand the course material when we discussed it as a group afterwards. However, all the learning material (Lectures and Lab activities) were provided to us and I found these useful for recapping topics during assignments and revision

It certainly helps, but not as much as I thought it would. Most of the course I had personally already covered at A-level, so I didn't end up learning very many new things. Most of these few things I did learn weren't relevant to the work I was doing anyway. I dont want to give the impression that it was completely useless and I learned nothing, just that the experience I gained form doing real work was much, much more useful than anything covered in the degree.

There are extra-curricular activities like football after work and board games clubs, as well as meals with your team which are sometimes (rarely) paid for by the business! There are frequent opportunities to help out in schools and careers fairs etc. which can be interesting and a nice way to give back

Yes

A couple of years ago I wouldn't have, since the Early Careers team were in such a mess which had a strong negative impact on the apprenticeship as a whole. But it has really come around up to now, where I have genuinely learned a lot and am having a great time doing interesting work in a small team

Try to figure out who wants to help you and who doesn't. Some people are just there to do their job (Which is fair enough) while others are very passionate about helping apprentices, figuring out who's who can save you a lot of bother. Smaller placement teams will give you a wider variety of work that is generally much more interesting, and the responsibility that comes with it. Larger teams are generally more mundane and can leave you feeling like a cog in a machine Imposter syndrome is a real thing, it isn't just you. Nobody expects an apprentice to know anything (not in a rude way) and won't be shocked by you asking basic questions. Anything you do already know is just a bonus