Case Study

After completing high school I wanted to go to university to explore a subject that I was interested in pursuing as a career. I was also keen to increase my independence and meet new people, so university was the perfect opportunity to do this.

I chose to study BA (Hons) Journalism at the University of Sunderland because I was really impressed by the facilities and the staff who worked there; I liked the idea of working with lecturers who had real-life knowledge of the industry. Their experiences and advice would turn out to be invaluable to me in addition to the course content, and was for me the best aspect of the course. I felt that everything we learned had much more depth and purpose to it because of the real-world experience the lecturers were able to provide. I also really appreciated the way the course was shaped around the NCTJ qualification, so we knew we were being fully prepared for all of our professional assessments.

I feel that the University focused on equipping us with all of the tools and knowledge we needed to progress as journalists after we graduated. If I was to advise prospective students, I would say get stuck in with as many extracurricular activities and opportunities as possible! In addition to the huge range of societies and activities that are available to help you meet new people and explore your interests, there are also course specific opportunities for example the MediaHUB was a very useful tool for us Journalism students.

The importance that the course placed on accuracy and ethics have been a huge influence on me personally and professionally. I have successfully built and led my own music journalism platform which continues to grow and I am able to use it to give opportunities to up-and-coming writers who, like me, needed experience for their portfolios. I also returned to the University of Sunderland recently to work in the MediaHUB to help coach Journalism students who are looking to get their hard work published.

I really enjoyed my time at the University of Sunderland and the Journalism course in particular, if you want to pursue a career in Journalism or PR I would definitely recommend it.”

Published 3 June 2020