After hearing what an amazing opportunity that Laura England, OH 2011-21, had completed, we contacted her to find out more about her audit internship at PwC:

I joined Hessle Mount in 2006, before moving to Hymers College Junior School in 2011 and went all the way through the school to finishING my A-levels in Hymers Sixth Form. I made some of my best memories at Hymers and met many of my closest friends. I also discovered my love for economics with my amazing teachers, Mr Mutter and Mr Exley. On top of the usual economics lessons, I attended Economics Club every Friday lunch where I spent most of my time planning how I was going to be the richest person in the world. Somehow, I won the Jo Masheder Economics award and began my Economics degree at the University of Bristol after leaving school in 2021.

During my time at university, I have completed a few different internships and mentorship schemes, for example, at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Environment Agency. I have also just come back from studying for a year in Pamplona, Spain, which was an incredible opportunity to immerse myself in a different culture and language, as well as make new friends from around the world and broaden my understanding of global business practices.

I applied for a women in business week-long programme at PwC in my second year which involved going into the office and hearing from a range of people about the company and its auditing department. To be honest when I applied, I had no idea what PwC was or auditing, but when I got the offer and found out it was the Big Four firm with the world’s leading audit department, I was pretty happy.

My top tip for getting into a prestigious firm with competitive internship and graduate schemes would be to apply early. By entering the process through the insight week rather than the internship, the application process only involved sending my CV, answering a few written questions, an aptitude quiz, and finally a video interview; I did not have to do the intense test centre thankfully! After completing this week most people receive an offer immediately for the summer internship the following year.

The summer internship itself began with a week of online training around compliance due to the handling of confidential information, and we finished the week with a volunteer day where we cultivated a woodland to reflect PwCs annual volunteer work. The following week we started in the office and were placed on an audit team and thrown straight into work. My team were auditing a building materials firm that turns over more than twenty billion dollars annually, which is quite a surreal feeling to be responsible for analysing their financial statements without any accountancy background! The job itself involved a lot of spreadsheets, numbers and statistics as you would expect, and some teams were able to work on client site, from farms to investment firms.

It was amazing to see the range of industries you are able to gain an insight within as an auditor, and the diversity in business size, structure, and operations. The atmosphere was not at all what I expected, as everyone was very welcoming and chatty giving the office a very social vibe. I was honoured to receive a return offer as a graduate for September 2025 which I am definitely considering.

Laura England, OH 2011-21

Laura, with friends she made from the internship