Tech degree apprentice Review

I've been working in a team of 6 in the Tax department developing a chatbot - day-to-day activities include stand-ups, meeting, programming, testing and other project development processes. This, however, is not standard for the degree - the majority of others are doing admin (making powerpoints etc) - and so while this is my day-to-day role, it is not common for this course

Yes - I've learnt and developed various programming language skills as well as developing my business acumen. We implemented agile methodologies which helped us understand the business aspect of things better. There was also training on how to do user testing well and lots of meetings which taught us how to interact with people on a technical and business level

The placement has been brilliant - the team was very welcoming and our project was super interesting. The programme overall could've done with more planning and keeping us better informed but the actual work with PwC has been really good for me. Better communication would be good but overall the work was good

For my team, they organised it really well but overall the whole programme is pretty good but has room for improvement. While I was lucky, lots of people were placed in team that weren't prepared for them (some team didn't even know they were taking apprentices on for summer, until they turned up on the first day). Additionally, we were informed we would DEFINITELY be working in our base office, however the majority of us have been placed elsewhere for this placement. As it's the first year, fair enough, but in the future it could be done much smoother.

In the placement, the support from the team has been amazing - they were always willing to help and teach us, and gave us a lot of time to make the placement really good. The programme leaders were also accessible - although they sometimes took a while to reply, responses would usually come through within a couple days

It was alright - some lecturers were really helpful and were very good at teaching. Some, however, were pretty awful at teaching and were extremely demotivating - this resulted in me being less keen to apply myself to those modules, ending up with me getting some lower grades than I could've.

The course covers some basics, however, having only completed one year of the course, the content was focused around getting everyone up to the same level and so there weren't many applicable modules (other than the programming ones). Hopefully in future years it will become more relevant to the workplace.

There are some lunch and learn talks where presentations are given on various technologies - I went to one which was really good. There are also societies at university that can be joined so there are multiple extra-curricular activities available - at uni, it is like we are normal students so uni life applies.

Yes

While the course isn't very well organised, I've really enjoyed placement and the opportunity they give - normal student life as well as work placements and a job at the end - is one you can't pass up. The lack of debt upon graduating is going to be really helpful in the future as well.

Be sure to know about the firm and have an interest in the business - while it is a technology degree, the placement include a lot of business aspects. Make sure you're open to new experiences and are up to networking and sitting in on a lot of daily stand-up meetings.