Warwick Advance offers you, as our undergraduate widening participation students, opportunities to develop yourselves personally and professionally. There’s a range of things you can get involved with, such as:
in-person and virtual employer-led presentations and workshops
e-mentoring
opportunity to complete a strengths profile so you can understand and investigate your strengths and then receive feedback from a trained practitioner to support you in your career
opportunity to apply to our Work Experience bursary so you are financially supported during your internship, work experience or placement
1:1 personalised feedback on applications
career consultations with the Careers team
access to our other career-boosting programmes such as TeamWork, WorkReady, the Warwick Award, URSS, Warwick Africa and much more
Before signing up to take part in Warwick Advance, make sure you check whether you're eligible! In order to be involved, you must be an undergraduate student from a widening participation background.
To be eligible to join this programme:
This must be your first degree of study.
Your permanent home postcode (i.e. your non-term time address) should be in a neighbourhood with low progression rates to higher education. This is determined by your postcode which you can check this using our postcode checker. (link to checker)
You must be eligible for both the tuition fee and full maintenance loan, even if you have not taken out either of these loans.
Priority will be given to applications from:
Students who are the first in their family to attend university
Students from a Black, Asian or ethnic minority group
Care leavers / students who have lived in local authority care (minimum of 13 weeks in local authority care within the last 15 years)
Students who are 21 or over at the point of starting their studies with us
Students who have participated in one of the University of Warwick access programmes (Unitracks, Pathways, Realising Opportunities)
Students who are current members of our Warwick Scholars or Multicultural Scholars programmes.
As part of the application process, you may be required to provide supporting documentation. We will always explain why we need supporting documentation and will ensure that we protect your data.
Graduate employers across a broad range of sectors offer internship and work experience opportunities throughout the academic year. If you're taking part in Warwick Advance, we'll let you know about these.
Employers advertising through us will give you one-to-one feedback on their applications to encourage your success.
There are a range of vacancies to apply for on myAdvantage: Search Jobs (warwick.ac.uk) ,so please do check there regularly! However, you may not always be able to get personal employer feedback from applications made on myAdvantage as it is separate from Warwick Advance - something to keep in mind!
Thinking about and preparing for internships can be very exciting! However, you may find that there are costs that come with them, such as:
Accommodation and travel (including interview travel). You may need to pay upfront for accommodation and travel expenses before you receive your first pay check which tends to be at the end of your first working month.
Lunch
Suitable clothing
We have put in place a bursary to support you. Please see 'funding support'.
All internships and work experience opportunities offered via Warwick Advance will be paid. If you're successful in securing an internship, you'll be employed, managed and paid directly by the host employer who you made the application for. Your employer will let you know your salary and it'll be clearly advertised on the advert we put out to you.
Make sure to remember that you will earn less than the advertised rate as most salaried earnings are subject to deductions for Income Tax and National Insurance. For more information, please see the GOV.UK website.
If you think you'll need financial support whilst attending interviews or during your internship, you are more than welcome to apply to the Work Experience Bursary.
If your bursary application is successful, you'll be entitled to £20 per day. This is to support you with costs such as travel, clothing, lunch etc.
You can apply to join the programme at any time during the academic year, but do remember that graduate spring and summer internships may have application deadlines in autumn and spring, so its best to join us as soon as possible!
Once we've received your application, we'll check your eligibility to join the programme. After that, if you're successful, we'll be in touch to welcome you on board and discuss the programme in more detail!
Other opportunities:
Like Warwick Advance, there are many other programmes you can get involved with and make the most of: