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Right, so my course is Business & Management, which is a four year course because I do a placement year as well.
At Aston it's really good because all the different business school students all do a common first year
so basically after your first year, if you then decide
you'd rather specialise in something like HR or marketing, you can do that,
If you want to make it broader, do what I did which is Business and Management, so
we specialise in two streams, rather than just one.
You can do it, which is brilliant. What I think is great about the Aston business course
is they're very into doing theory and practical applications, so for example
in my final year, one of my projects was to
basically... an agency came in and they told us about
Horlicks and they said "we want you to rebrand it at a younger audience" -
under forty-fives - and so our job was to think of a campaign -
advertising, public relations, all of those that we'd learned about
and in the end we presented that to the agency and to GlaxoSmithKlein themselves
so that was a really, really good opportunity.
In fact, some people actually got jobs from that.
I think Aston's different from other unis...
I mean I first noticed it when I went to lots of different open days - I think that's a really, really good idea
and Aston was definitely the friendliest. I think everyone was
really nice and really welcoming and
other Uni's - they can be a...
I found out that they're a bit like..."oh there you go, off you go, go and look round the accommodation on your own" and stuff.
But Aston was different.
I think also, I was determined because I'm quite ambitious and I like that practical side.
Aston offers a placement year and...
other unis offer a placement year as well but Aston...because
the placement year is their USP-type thing
they're very focused on it and they have a lot of support here fore people finding placements.
They offer placement across lots of different courses, so engineering can find placements, psychology,
business obviously - it's compulsory. Language students, they often go over to that country to learn more about that language.
I think that's great because I came back from placement, I could live with all my friends
that I'd made in my first year and second year whereas I know other people who were
on placement - the same place as me - from different universities, they
would go back and they had to find new people to live with and
that can be quite stressful. It seems like a small thing but it's not really,
when you come back from placement, it's great to be able to live with the same people
so I think that's what makes Aston different from other unis.
OK, so my placement was at Toyota. I worked as a Lexus brand assistant.
Basically my job was in the marketing department
flights at paws by
so what I did was I was kind of the core contact
for dealerships with any queries on Lexus models.
I also conducted market research on the new models.
One of my highlights was I managed to see
a new Lexus that they're going to bring out in - like - 20 years time or something like that,
the prototype, I got to see it - it was really, really cool to be part of that,
because there was only a small team that was part of that, so that was brilliant.
I also...because what I've always wanted to do, I've always wanted to get into fashion buying, really.
So what I did while I was there was I made contacts with
the buying department at Toyota
and I managed to get some voluntary work, working - sort of - overtime,
working in the buying department, supporting them,
I worked on the stationery tender process so I got to
sees loads of samples of stationery, got to
decide which company to go for for our new stationery contract, which was really, really good -
brilliant, brilliant experience.
I think the placement years is brilliant as well becuase
it really helps you when you go into your final year. I mean,
I didn't realise how tough final year was going to be. I know everyone says "it's really tough" but
it really is and it really motivated me to start with, because I thought
you know, I've done my year in industry, I thought "this is what I really want to do", you know, "business is what I really love"
and it definitely gave me that boost for final year, especially because
you've been studying for two years, and I think it gives you a bit of a break because you do the practical side
then you come back and you can - sort of - really study again.
In my first year I lived on campus, I lived in one of the towers
I had a really, really good time, I really enjoyed living on campus.
At Aston, all the accommodation is on campus, which is really useful.
You're always about 5 minutes away from your lectures so you can get up at 10 to 9 and just stroll in, which is great.
OK, so now, looking back as a final year, Aston's...I've had so many great times here.
I'd definitely recommend Aston to anyone who is passionate about business,
very driven, because Aston Business School is one of the top business schools in Europe and the UK.
The last four years at Aston have been amazing. Really, really good.
And I am quite sad to be leaving - obviously -
but I mean I'm ready... I think I'm ready for my career now, having done the placement year, I've been in work,
and I'm just really ready to get started.