My Experience as a Business (Marketing) Student

Business student Max talks us through his time as a BA (Hons) Business (Marketing) student at Birmingham City University.

When choosing my course, I knew that it would be business related as it was something I was always interested in studying. At first, I thought I would take core business but after attending the open day at BCU I was persuaded by the marketing talk to pick a course that had a mix of both subjects, as I found the marketing side sounded very interesting.

In my first year I did find it difficult to get to grips with as there was a lot of independent research that I wasn’t used to and this mixed with living away from home for the first time made things hard to get used to. However after my first few weeks I was able to adapt and understand what I should be doing in order to do well. That first year helped me grow as I developed my research skills and my writing skills due to the assessments and teaching methods.

Going into my second year I had learnt many valuable skills from my first year such as budgeting, how to cook and most importantly how to manage my time effectively. I was more comfortable in my second year as I knew what was expected and as a result, I was more confident in my own ability. As a result, I improved my grades in second year. As I had built connections within the university, I was given new opportunities, such as representing my course on open days. This helped me develop my presenting skills as I had to give a speech on my course to students and parents on open days.

Unfortunately the pandemic happened whilst I was in second year and this meant I moved back home and completed my second semester there. Although this was a new experience for everyone I felt that the university did well to provide the help I needed to do well in my exams and coursework. No one knew how long the pandemic would last and I was hopeful that it would be back to normal going into my final year, luckily it is and I'm back on campus!

As a final year student, I feel that BCU has helped me develop into a young professional who is different from the A level student who joined the university. Throughout my time at BCU I have stepped outside of my comfort zone and this has opened doors to a lot of opportunities within BCU which have aided my development. I have been able to add a variety of skills to my CV and projects that I do for my course have provided me with great talking points in job interviews for graduate roles.