Worried about my graduate prospects

tiamaria

How did you get on with the gaming degree OP? My son wants to do this but I'm not convinced it's a good choice so I'd be interested to know if you made a career from this.

Alcmene

Games Development is a fantastic course. However, it is also a very niche field. I would suggest rather than doing a Masters course, which is MORE academia, that you try and go on a placement year. This will open up your options to acquire other skills, and it also shows employers that you can perform in the workplace.

Tiamaria - I suggest to your son to always try and get on a degree course with a strong placement unit that will support the year out in industry.

Lokolo

I am doing Games Programming and my placement is at IBM as Software Engineer

Hehe I love BlackSheep rar rar raring in the second post hehe. Oh how I love his enthusiasm for non academic courses and ex polys.

olly300

Good new universities or "polys" as they use to be called where known for having links with local employers.

This meant that any engineering or technical student would have at least one summer placement with an employer.

Most traditional universities would add a placement year during the course which not all students took up.

I've known and worked with students who were at new unis as I work in IT and I know the companies I've worked for would and in all cases - financial climate permitting - take on the students after graduation who worked in the company during their student years. After all it's easier to take on a graduate who knows the company and you know has a good attitude to work than one you don't know.

So worrying whether your uni is a "new" or "traditional" one is not the problem if you are doing such a vocational subject, what you should have worried about before you got on the course is what links with industry does the department I am going to study with have. (If you do an MSc this is one of the things you should look at.)

I personally have friends' who went to "new" unis over "traditional" unis because the department has a better rating and/or more links with employers.

If you are doing an academic Arts or Social Science subject like English or History then yes you should have gone to a traditional university, as it's hard enough getting a job with those degrees from a traditional university let alone a new one.

whitfreak

When it comes to university choice it depends on what you are doing and what you want to do with it. If its a course which you also intend to be its you vocation (computing, law, engineering, whatever), then it pick the univeristy with a good reputation in the subject and good links with industry. If its a academic subject you dont intend you carry on, then the general reputation univeristy may become a factor.

Eitherway once you get into a job interview what university you went to becomes irrelivant. They'll want to know about your work experience, your transferable skills, specific skills. So year in industry, summer placements, relavent work, any work are important for all students (in that order of preferance). It seems the things you do outside of the degree are more important than the degree (once you've got a 2:1 atleast anyway.)

Oldernotwiser

whitfreak wrote: »

When it comes to university choice it depends on what you are doing and what you want to do with it. If its a course which you also intend to be its you vocation (computing, law, engineering, whatever), then it pick the univeristy with a good reputation in the subject and good links with industry. If its a academic subject you dont intend you carry on, then the general reputation univeristy may become a factor.

Eitherway once you get into a job interview what university you went to becomes irrelivant. They'll want to know about your work experience, your transferable skills, specific skills. So year in industry, summer placements, relavent work, any work are important for all students (in that order of preferance). It seems the things you do outside of the degree are more important than the degree (once you've got a 2:1 atleast anyway.)

I agree completely with your post except that Law really isn't a vocational degree. Only a small minority of Law graduates actually go into the law professionally.

As well as the ex curricula activities you mention, employers also look hard at the non work related activities that people do whilst at university. I'm always amazed at the number of people who (as an example) want to go into journalism but haven't been active on the university newspaper.

There's so much more to being at university than studying and propping up the bar!