We are passionate that our students have the core technical and soft skills desired by employers, and that they enter the employment market with an awareness of a wide variety of roles across numerous industries.

Careers Support and skills development

Throughout your studies, you'll be able to take advantage of opportunities to develop key employability skills, for example:

First year

• You will be assigned a personal tutor and be offered regular tutorials to help develop confidence in communicating mathematics.

Second year

• All courses incorporate a skills module, focusing on understanding employment opportunities and effective applications, building teamworking skills, and presenting the salient points of scientific literature.
• BSc and MMath Mathematics include a module that aims to develop skills for communicating mathematics.
• BSc Mathematics and Statistics offers a module that teaches statistical computing and the analysis of data for open-ended problems. It includes the opportunity to undertake statistical consultancy for an external client.

Final year

• You will be given individual careers support from careers advisors and your personal tutor through a  'personal development review'.

All years

• A weekly placements advice drop-in session, run by our Placement Team, focuses on finding the right placement, applications, CVs and interview technique.
• You will have the chance to design and deliver outreach sessions in schools, through the STEMath ambassador scheme (for secondary schools) and the Maths Squad scheme (for primary schools).
• You will also have the opportunity to seek funding from the Department for a one-week Teaching & Learning project, to be undertaken in the summer, in order to create, develop or evaluate teaching or related materials.

Skills in logical thinking, numeracy and computing are developed throughout the programmes. You can further your skills in logical thinking by attending the weekly Maths Arcade, which is an opportunity for students and staff to get together one lunch time to play board games with a mathematical or logical basis.

Events

We recently held the annual Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) careers event. This was a recruitment and awareness event in which ambassadors from

• 14 pharmaceutical companies;
• a clinical trials unit;
• the UK regulatory body;
• and 4 universities;

met with students from numerous universities to provide an insight into the many opportunities for both mathematics and statistics graduates in this industry.

One attendee said:

"The day as a whole was well thought out and very helpful. I could get first hand information and advice from people working in different fields surrounding Medical Statistics which was beneficial as it enabled me to think more specifically about what sort of area I would want to get involved in.

"Additionally, as a third year BSc student, there were several universities who offered masters in Medical Statistics who I could get handouts and talk to about their masters courses. I would enjoy doing something similar again and would recommend it to anyone considering going."

Further Study

On average, approximately 30% of our graduates go onto further study.

Popular further degrees have included masters in Mathematics, Statistics, Financial Engineering, Operational Research, Ergonomics and Electronic/Media Imaging. Some graduates have chosen to move on to PhDs in subjects related to mathematics and statistics.

Many of our former students also opted to move into teacher training (PGCE), either in primary or secondary education. To help foster interests in teaching, the Department runs the STEMath Ambassadors scheme, which encourages students to deliver their own or an existing mathematics masterclass in local schools. A new initiative is the Maths Squad, which encourages students to join staff in developing and delivering short outreach activities in local primary schools.

Six months after graduation

The results of the latest Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education 2015/16 survey for our 2016 graduates (all of our degrees combined) are:

• 95% of our graduates (single and joint honours) are in work or further study six months after leaving;
• of these, 77% are in graduate-level work or further study;
• of those who are in full-time work, 75% are in a professional or managerial job.

 Read our alumni career stories