Physics
Placements and careers
Placements
Whichever BSc programme you are studying you can spend a year on a professional placement. You will be employed full-time in the third year of your degree, returning to the University to complete your studies.
If you are an MPhys student and wish to choose the placement option you will spend six months from July to December working in a research establishment before returning to the University for the final semester of your degree.
Why take a placement?
- Experience working in the professional world
- Develop time management, communication and team work skills
- Placements can lead to a permanent job with the placement employer
- Employers favour graduates with employment experience
- Earn a salary; in 2012-13 between £14,000 and £21,000
- Invaluable experience of the recruitment process
Support
Our dedicated Placements Team will support and guide you through the recruitment process, developing your skills for applications, interviews and organising employer-led workshops.
During the placement you will also have regular contact with the Placements Team, a Placements Tutor and a workplace supervisor, as well as a visit from a member of staff, in most cases.
What kind of placement could you do?
Some of our UK placement employers have included:
- BAE Systems
- MBDA
- National Physical Laboratory
- Rutherford Appleton Laboratories
- Sharp Laboratories Europe
Placements abroad have included:
- the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, Davos, Switzerland
- the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics, Stuttgart, Germany
- ESRF and ILL, Grenoble, France
- Siemens, Munich, Germany
MPhys placement employers include:
- European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, France
- Culham Centre for Fusion energy
- Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
- Institute Laue-Langevin, France
We cannot guarantee that a particular placement will be available or that you will be able to earn a particular salary; applications for placements can be very competitive.
Careers
Physicists are in huge demand; careers that our recent graduates have entered include:
- university research (for opportunities at Bath, see our website)
- research and development
- design and production
- medical physics
- teaching physics
- Patent Law (UK and European)
- geophysics
- meteorology
- computing (hardware and software)
- systems engineering
- administration and management
- accountancy
- banking
- business analysis
- financial analysis
- science journalism
- setting up and running their own business
