Information Technology is a fundamental part of all successful businesses. This technically-challenging programme gives you experience in many of the typical activities involved in the application of IT in business. As well as becoming an expert in software design, hardware and communications, you will understand how IT supports business activities and establishes competitive advantage, and how it can be managed in an efficient and effective way.

Why study at Reading?

• In-house expertise from across research and industry. You will be taught by lecturers with expertise across a broad range of areas. Some conduct world-renowned research in fields such as parallel computing, computer vision or robotics. Others are industry leading IT consultants who consult for companies such as Fujitsu-Siemens, the BBC and Oracle, or are entrepreneurs in their own right. This mix of expertise ensures you're taught real-world skills from those who put them into practice as well as cutting edge skills from those who are developing the next generation of computer technologies.

• Strong entrepreneurial and career management theme. Our lecturers have extensive academic and industrial experience, and will show you how to apply your IT skills in industry or for your own business.

• Cutting edge research. We are leaders in fields as diverse as computer vision, room-sized virtual reality systems, and robotics, all of which you can explore as part of your degree.

• Excellent links with industry. Major international IT companies such as Microsoft and Cisco are actively involved in our teaching programmes both through student placements and our industrial advisory board.

• Extremely friendly environment. Staff and students work well together - why not come to our Open Days and see for yourself!

Student experience and employment

We have a state-of-the-art IT laboratory specifically to support you as IT students. The lab is furnished with new PCs and systems that are available for hands-on work on hardware, software, communication and networking. We also have a new experimental network comprising equipment from Cisco for use by undergraduates in the latter part of their degree.  We also strongly encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in you, with lectures aimed at showing you how to earn money from the skills you acquire before you leave university, and a dedicated module in Entrepreneurship, which sets you the task of creating an idea for a business, developing a business plan, and presenting it to a set of independent judges from the IT and business community.

Career prospects

Because of the wide scope of our IT degree, the skills we give you will equip you for a wide range of careers within the Information Technology industry. Typical areas that you might consider include programming, information security, web site design and development, systems architecture, network design and planning, systems development and design, database design and administration, systems testing, systems integration, project management, software engineering, and IT consulting. Recent graduates from Reading have gone on to work in the following roles and companies; Microsoft (Technical Support Engineer and Sales Solution Professional), Ericsson (Service Management Leader), UBS Investment Bank (Financial Analyst), Dell (Systems Analyst), Logica CMG Service Delivery Consultant and Telemetry Help Desk Analyst), Hutchinson 3G (Provisioning Administrator and Revenue Monitoring Analyst), JP Mogan Cazenove (IT Support Analyst) and Siemens Business Services (Business Associate).