Norwich

Home to both the University of East Anglia and the Norwich University of the Arts. Norwich is a bustling student city and produces countless in-demand graduates for employers to fight over. The city of Norwich's graduates are always impressive when they apply for graduate jobs and graduate schemes. We wanted to know what made them different from graduates across the UK, looking at in particular their achievement, career ambition and work readiness.

But we were interested to know what made them so different to graduates from elsewhere in the UK. To do this we, collected together the data from graduates who signed up on graduate-jobs.com and had graduated between 2009 and 2014. Then we drew up comparisons between those averages and the rest of the UK, looking at things like degree classification, work experience and what sectors they were most interested in working in. This showed us exactly how graduates from East Anglia were different to the rest of the UK and exactly why employers were so keen to snap them up.

Sectors

The two universities in Norwich cover many areas of study and also help prepare graduates for applying this knowledge and these skills outside of academia and in the working world. With this in mind it is easy to see how this has translated into the ambitions of the students and graduates that signed up with us. The most popular five sectors chosen by graduates from Norwich are relatively similar to those chosen by the graduates from the UK as a whole. These include Marketing, Management, Advertising and Public Relations and Banking.

The one difference that can be seen in graduates from Norwich is a more creative side. This can be seen by the popularity of Media amongst its graduates. More than a quarter of graduates from the city viewed this as an impressive option for a career, being chosen by 27.3%.

Degree Classifications

The two universities in Norwich hold themselves in high acclaim and are looking to maintain their standards, as can be seen from the grades issued. In an attempt to maintain this strong academic reputation, graduates from Norwich were awarded fewer First Class degrees than the national average. Just 9.1% of graduates from Norwich received the top nod, while the national average stood at 9.8%.

However, this could excuse the amount of 2.1 degrees that were issued in Norwich. A staggering 59.6% of graduates from the city were awarded this classification, far higher than the national average of 48.1%.

Work Experience

Work experience and work place skills are often viewed as vitally important by employers, but this is something that the universities in Norwich should be extremely concerned about. A meagre 8.8% of graduates from the universities in Norwich had work experience. This was a long way off the national average which is still relatively low at 16.6%. It was also the lowest in the UK by region, with the second lowest being Canterbury, with 10.5%.

This should alarm graduates especially the majority that do not already have work experience as employers are very keen to see graduates who can settle into the work place environment quickly.