A sandwich course, more commonly known as a sandwich year is just another way of describing a placement. In simpler terms, this means that a student takes a year out of their degree to gain experience in their industry. The pay is more or less the same as that of a regular employee as the student is required to work on a full-time basis.
Interestingly, these placement years are described as “sandwich” years as they are sandwiched between the penultimate and final year.
Sandwich Courses
Studying a sandwich course while in your undergraduate year will tremendously make things easier for you in the long run. Most importantly, it will cut your labour of finding a good job as the stamp of an internship or placement on your CV will translate into more job opportunities coming your way.
Well, it is just because of placements that many students accrue almost a year of professional work experience, learning industry specific technical and social skills.
There are two types of sandwich courses that a candidate can opt for:
Thick Sandwich Course
Thick sandwich courses offer a placement year of whole year. Usually in these courses, a student is required to work continuously for an organisation throughout the year.
Thin Sandwich Course
On the contrary, thin sandwich courses offer relatively shorter placement experience. This is a better alternative for those people who do not want to work for just organisation, and instead seek to work for different organisation for short intervals.
Do all universities offer sandwich placements?
Unfortunately, not every university offer courses that accommodate a sandwich year. However, even if they do offer, the feasibility or practicality of a sandwich year will be governed by your subject of study. It is possible that your university offers sandwich courses, however the subject you want to study is available as a normal course and not as a sandwich.
In this scenario, we would recommend students to do summer internships.
