Meningitis: what to know, wherever you are
Following the deaths of two students at Kent, universities elsewhere are telling students what to watch for. The risk to any individual remains low, but meningococcal disease escalates within hours: headache with fever, neck stiffness, aversion to light, confusion, cold hands and feet, and a rash that does not fade under pressure — and the rash arrives late, so do not wait for it. The Kent cases are meningitis B, a strain the MenACWY vaccine does not cover, so vaccination at school is not a reason to wait. MenACWY remains free on the NHS for students who missed it and protects against four other strains. Freshers’ flu, GP registration and staying healthy covers registering.
Students are not switching parties, they are switching off
Polling eighteen months after the general election finds Labour continuing to lose student support without another party gaining it — the movement is towards disengagement rather than realignment. Given that student finance, rents and graduate work are all decided politically, it is a costly place for a cohort to end up.
“The interviewer was my ex’s dad”
Students share what has gone wrong in internship applications and interviews this season — including the interviewer who turned out to be an ex-partner’s father. Funny, and underneath it the useful reminder that the pool of employers in most sectors is small, and that how you leave an application matters as much as how you enter one. Assessment centres and graduate interviews covers the format.
Starting something instead of applying for something
With graduate vacancies at a six-year low, an entrepreneurship academic sets out what going it alone actually requires — and is honest that most student businesses earn less than a graduate job for the first two years. Universities run enterprise funds and incubators that almost nobody applies to. Graduate jobs in the UK covers the alternatives.