Applying for jobs, internships and programs

I’ve been keeping myself busy since finishing university, applying for scholarships, jobs and internships.  There are also some small competitions I enter like The UK APPCHALLENGE where I download and share apps on a weekly bases for a chance to win prizes. It’s also beneficial for me as I can see the standard of apps on the market place as well as observe other peoples artwork as almost a research purpose. I’ve also signed up for a few events in the next few months such as user groups and a hackathon in July.

Other than applications, the only other thing I can be doing at the moment is wait for replies! I’ve got some ones in mind that I’d love to join but really depends on competition.  I’ve also worked on some project in my own time already. For example the image I made below.

Didn’t take me too long, though I do want to improve on it in the near future.  

Thought I would lastly talk about applications, I had no idea about the terminology used for position applicants. For example an “advisor” reference. Why I await replies form companies and institutions I’ve also been in touch with students in my year and we do have some freelance/indie developments that could be a possibility.  

Reflection on my university application

I remember the application process being very tedious. I didn’t think about what I wanted to do after sixth form until late in my final year. I started the application process on time although, from what I can remember, it took a long time to register. One of the annoying things about the process was not knowing  how many UCAS points I would get. Predicting my grades was rather difficult especially because some are exam based.

I started looking at universities based on how many UCAS points I guessed I would get and shortlisted 5 universities. I could only visit a few local ones because I didn’t drive and had a job in my last year at sixth form. I researched online before visiting my final choices. For my industry it’s heavily based on portfolio work so I looked up people who had graduated from my selected universities to check what their standards where. This gave me an idea of what I would be able to achieve after finishing that exact course. This helped narrow my decisions down, as well as reading the university course briefs. It’s rather ironic that the more research you do on what university you want to visit, the less time you have to revise for you exams and do coursework to achieve the UCAS points you need!

If I could give any tips it would be to visit the institutes yourself. For some people it might be difficult to choose a degree area and course. I cannot give advice on this topic because I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do since I was young. Although I did have my personal preferences in software and operating systems. I’ve already written a blog post on applying to universities available here.

A simple search for show reels and showcase work for a university does give you a good overview of the tasks involved for the course. So if you can’t personally attend all open days, maybe consider attending the virtual open days. Some universities even use a virtual tour which seems to be filled with info about the course. You need to know as much as possible about a course before attending university, as it is a life changing decision.

Applying To University - My Experience

This is my first blog post on here, so I’m going to start with a little introduction about myself and my university application process. So at this moment in time I’m a Microsoft Student Partner, a Third year Computer Science student in Computer Animation. I will not disclose the university names that I applied for mostly because I don’t want to alter your university decision as you should apply for a university based on your personal course and preference. 

I applied for 4 universities while in sixth form. I got accepted to 3 of the 4 universities I chose. Being accepted into one of them involved doing a written exam and interview. The exam was about an hour long and generally job interview style questions. Although there was a practical test. We had to draw something in a few minutes which was contrasting. So I actually drew an elephant on a bicycle. It wasn't the artistic skills they was looking for but more the fact that you can be creative and think on the spot. This shows that getting adequate grades won’t confirm your place at university. That being said, I got accepted, but I decided not to got there because of the machine OS and their primary software focus.

Another university I got accepted at looked amazing from the outside. Contrastingly inside was completely out dated. Paint was pealing from the walls. Both hardware and software needed huge upgrade all round.

Machines that looked like this running Win95 in the room...

Now at the University of Bedfordshire there was up to date hardware and software. I’m giving my honest opinion here, I’m not being biased but for me it was perfect. It was the only university that had good motion capture technology and it used software that I had prior experience with.

Learn from my mistakes! Attend as many open days as possible. Know exactly what you want from the course, especially in a computer science degree. In this field, courses are named very vaguely. Game Development can mean primarily Photoshop/3D editing. On the other hand it main flash/2D based so it's very important you know what your getting into!