Internships
Doing an internship or placement can be a great way to gain valuable experience within your career sector of interest. It can help you develop key employability skills, increase your commercial awareness and build professional contacts. Moreover, with nearly a third of graduate roles going to those previously known to the organisation, it can give your graduate employment prospects a real boost. Internships or placements can last from a few weeks over the holiday period to a full year and are most commonly taken up between the penultimate and final year of your degree. There are also a number of shorter insight weeks and work experience opportunities aimed at first and second year students.
If you decide you would like to take a year out to gain experience of working in industry through the Year in Industry programme you will need to speak to the school's Placements Officer Dr Olga Fernholz to arrange to take a year’s leave of absence. However, there are also a number of opportunities available over the summer months. See below for some information and resources on where and how to find internships.
The IoP have some good general advice on applying for internships.
If you are interested in the aerospace industry, Royal Aeronautical Society has a careers portal where they provide information about internship opportunities and application support to university students.
You may also find the Gradcracker website a good source of information for internships and summer placements. Other sources of information include StudentJob, RateMyPlacement, Jobs section on LinkedIn, StudentLadder to name the most used ones.
Below we provide links to a variety of major internship programmes, separated into academic placements (e.g. at universities, observatories etc) and placements within industry. We will endeavour to keep this list as up-to-date as possible. Please contact the school's Placements Officer Olga Fernholz with any questions regarding internships.
Please be aware that study abroad, compulsory year abroad, optional placements/internships and integrated year in industry opportunities may change at any time for a number of reasons, including curriculum developments, changes to arrangements with partner universities or placement/industry hosts, travel restrictions or other circumstances outside of the university's control. Every effort will be made to update this information as quickly as possible should a change occur.