Career prospects
The Alumnitool on LinkedIn can help you gain insight into possible careers after you finish your degree. It can also help you get in contact with an alumnus or alumna of your degree programme or other programmes. Nearly all graduates have a LinkedIn profile and can answer questions about your future career. They’re often more than happy to share their experiences with you. The video belows explains how the alumnitool works, and how you can use search criteria to find career information that is relevant to you.
Would you like to know more about how you can use LinkedIn to expand your network and put the new information into practice straight away? Take the LinkedIn workshop from Career Services. The workshop Exploring the job market & networking is also useful if you'd like to improve your networking skills, using LinkedIn and other ways.
I completed a lot of different courses during the Master's. There were theoretical courses such as epigenetics and gene expression, but also more practical subjects like microscopy and data processing. There are also a lot of options when it comes to internships.
“I have been interested in stem cells since I was at school. I went to study Biology and I started looking at what to study next during my third year. The Cancer, Stem Cells and Developmental Biology Master's was a natural step because the programme works together with the Hubrecht Laboratory, the location in the Netherlands for stem-cell technology.
Even before you start, you have to find an internship with one of the groups involved in the Master's. So you start your internship straightaway and you take courses that last one or two weeks in the interim. In that short period, you are fully immersed in the subject and the course finishes with an exam or a paper. I completed a lot of different courses during the Master's. There were theoretical courses such as epigenetics and gene expression, but also more practical subjects like microscopy and data processing. There are also a lot of options when it comes to internships.
Through my first internship with the Hubrecht, I moved on to my second internship at Harvard University. That was a really enjoyable time, during which I learned an enormous amount as well. It was a very special experience to work with all sorts of good researchers. The Master's curriculum is full, but the quality is also high. Because I stayed on for longer at my internships to finish my research projects, it took me longer to finish the Master's. But it was certainly an instructive and enjoyable time.”
Lotte Bruens (24) is a trainee researcher the UMC Utrecht and the Hubrecht Laboratory.