Although Alan did not take up computing until he was almost 17, he learned quickly and soon became the family IT guru and wanted to learn more about computer science rather than IT.

He likes studying computer science because in each module, he is encouraged to think outside the box.

"We are always pushed to do more in computer science," he said. "For example, we were given a task to create a simple notebook programme with basic features and challenged to improve upon it and create more features."

In June 2009, he did his one year industrial placement at RM plc in Abingdon, the leading supplier of educational software, services and systems to UK schools, where he was a test engineer for the provision of IT facilities to schools.

"We had to outline test cases that end users would use and find out their requirements and then test the system," he said. "This gave me a great insight into the industry and I was treated like an employee and given all the normal responsibilities of a test engineer."

During his placement, Alan learned that everything he did in his work could affect the company and its reputation.

"I learned that they could lose credibility if I made mistakes," he said. "That's very different to being at university where anything I do here only affects my own grade. This led me to change the way I think about business and end users and led to me looking beyond myself and I liked that."

Alan also liked the fact that he got an opportunity to work with lots of groups of people and he gradually developed his communication skills which he took with him to his next internship which was as a technology analyst at the Bank of America.

This was a nine week placement spent designing and implementing programmes to assist analysts in their interpretation of financial markets.

"This is what I really want to do and Bank of American has offered me a graduate job after I finish my degree if I get a 2:1," he said.

Alan is now back in his fourth year at university.

"It's a bit of a shock being back at university," he said. "I've always preferred working to learning and it has really benefited me to do a year out in industry."

He is now working on his final year project which is to develop a network evaluation service for JANET, a non-profit organisation which provides network sources for higher education and further education.

He feels the benefit of having done an industrial placement in his approach to his project.

"Every student should do work placements, even in their first year, there will be placements out there," he said. "Experience in industry is invaluable. We're all the same when we graduate from university, but someone with experience in industry is worth more to employers and students who don't have this experience will be at a disadvantage against students who do."

If time and money were no object, Alan would be a chef and open a cake shop, but he knows that his Dad would disown him if he did that.

It is just as well then that he has his heart set on being a computer scientist and is putting his all into his final year so that he gets his 2:1 so that he can work as a technology analyst at the Bank of America.