International Students

Welcome to the School of Physics, a School with over 100 years of history.

Birmingham has one of the largest Physics departments in the UK with internationally acclaimed academics in education and research.

 

Your First Year at Birmingham

Your first year as a Physics student at the University of Birmingham will be an interesting and exciting time full of new experiences and challenges. Here are a few of the highlights you can expect from your first year:

• Develop a broad skill-set – you will develop a broad range of skills that will set you up for your programme, and make you highly employable in the jobs market - including internships - as well as, developing confidence in problem solving, programming, writing and presenting.
• Research-led teaching – you will not only be taught by academics who are world-leaders in their research fields – with examples including quantum technology, particle physics, gravitational waves and exoplanets – you will also have the opportunity to actively participate in our research programmes through project work.  
• A flexible programme that matches to your interests – whether you are inspired by the fundamentals of physics or a particular field of research, or want to develop hands-on practical skills or pursue theoretical studies, we have programmes and individual courses for you, with flexibility through optional modules in later years that allow you to follow particular threads or themes.
• Active student societies – our Physics students lead award-winning societies - such as the Poynting Physical Society, The Theoretical Physics at the University of Birmingham (or The.P.U.B for short!) and AstroSoc - who organise social and professional events, including career events, talks, quiz nights, projects and social evenings. They also arrange talks from experts in the field and viewing of the night skies through the society's telescopes.

Why Physics at Birmingham?

Becoming a Physics student at the University of Birmingham will be an interesting and exciting time full of new experiences and challenges.

Here are a few of the reasons to choose Physics at Birmingham:

• Flexibility - our courses are designed to give grounding in core physics in the early stages and then allow specialisation and a wealth of options during the later years. As such, it is often possible to swap between our specialised courses early in your studies, subject to satisfactory achievement during the first two years of study.
• Academic Support - contact hours are split between lectures, labs, computing classes, small group example classes and tutorial sessions and amounts to around 22 hours a week in the first year. Our tutorials are held weekly in groups of no more than four students and are invaluable to ensuring our students have a ready source of academic and personal help throughout their studies.
• Access to excellent facilities – our laboratories contain equipment specialised to teaching degree level Physics, allowing our students to pursue a wide range of experimental interests throughout their degree. We also have our own observatory just outside the city, which contains a modern telescope and equipment.  We are also the only physics department in the country to have its own cyclotron accelerator.
• Study and social space - the department has plenty of study spaces and computers in addition to other facilities around the campus. There is also a café in the physics building which is a great meeting place and the perfect place to grab lunch between lectures.
• Careers Support - our courses aim to prepare you for graduate level employment either as a Physicist or in the wider working world. We have a large Careers Centre on campus and a careers tutor in the School of Physics and Astronomy. We run careers tutorials in Year 2 of the degree, and organise careers fairs for our undergraduates, where representatives from companies come to talk to and recruit our students. We also provide special advice for our final year students who are applying for jobs. This support is reflected in our consistently high graduate employability rate, as reported in the Destination of Leavers form Higher Education Survey.
• To get a feel of what it is like to study Physics here at the University of Birmingham, you are welcome to join a virtual visit day, the Offer Holder Facebook groups or take up our offer of a current physics student buddy who can answer questions about moving to the UK to study Physics at Birmingham.

Hear from our international community

One of the best ways to find out what life is really like as an international Physics student is to hear from them! Here, our current students and recent graduates talk about their experience and give real insight into student life at Birmingham. To see full student profiles, as well as, student videos and much more, please see our International Students Information page.