Food Science (with foundation year)
Entry requirements
UCAS Tariff
5 GCSEs at A-C/4-9 including Maths and English, and at least one A2 level or a BTEC equivalent qualification.
About this course
The foundation year of this Coventry University degree will be delivered from our CU Coventry campus. Course delivery from year 1 of the degree course onwards will be from our Coventry University campus.
This course aims to provide you with a solid grounding for building a career in the food industry.
The foundation year seeks to develop your core understanding within the sciences, including biology, chemistry and physiology, in addition to developing our academic and communication skills further. Students who successfully complete their foundation year will then progress onto the Food Science BSc (Hons) degree within Coventry University’s School of Life Sciences.
The degree focuses on food production, new product design, food analysis and food safety, and provides an opportunity to prepare for a career as a food scientist in the largest manufacturing industry in the UK.
A focus on practice-led teaching means you will have opportunity to develop the analytical and practical skills required by employers – working with accuracy and precision to obtain data and results relevant to the skills being taught. The degree provides an opportunity to develop an understanding of the complex commercial nature of the industry, as well as the interactions between food composition, metabolism, diet, health, and consumer science.
**Key benefits of the degree**
* Gain hands-on experience of a wide range of industry techniques in our state-of-the-art laboratories based in the multi-million-pound Alison Gingell Building
* Specialist industry-standard facilities include analytical equipment such as GC, GC-MS, ICP and HPLC, in addition to access to food science facilities for rheological and texture profile analysis of food and drink as well as tasting sessions
* Our current experienced teaching team bring a range of professional and research expertise into their teaching
* Research-informed teaching brings real life examples and case studies into lecture discussions and tutorials
See our website for further details.
Modules
Foundation year modules include:
Introduction to Health and Disease
Foundation of Anatomy and Physiology
Introduction to Cell Biology
Foundation of Chemistry
Successful completion of the foundation year progresses you to year one of the degree course. This course has a common first degree year. The common first year enables you to work alongside students doing similar courses to you, to widen your knowledge and exposure to other subject areas and professions. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with other students, so you can share your insights and experience which will help you to develop and learn.
If you discover an interest in a specific subject you have studied, upon successful completion of your first year, you could swap degrees with another course in your common first year (subject to meeting progression requirements).
Modules
Physiology and Biochemistry for Nutrition
Introduction to Public Health
Chemistry of Foods
Introduction to Food Law and Policy
Practical and Academic Skills for Food and Nutrition Sciences
Introduction to Food Preparation and Production
Year Two
In year two, you will develop more advanced knowledge and skills to do with nutrition across the lifespan, food microbiology, food preparation, food processing technology, food properties and material sciences, amongst others.
Modules
Research and Employability Skills for Food, Nutrition and Health
Nutrition through the Lifespan
Food Microbiology
Principles of Food Preparation
Food Processing Technology
Food Properties and Material Sciences
Placement Year
There’s no better way to find out what you love doing than trying it out for yourself, which is why a work placement* can often be beneficial. Work placements usually occur between your second and final year of study. They’re a great way to help you explore your potential career path and gain valuable work experience, whilst developing transferable skills for the future.
If you choose to do a work placement year, you will pay a reduced tuition fee* of £1,250. For more information, please go to the fees and funding section. During this time you will receive guidance from your employer or partner institution, along with your assigned academic mentor who will ensure you have the support you need to complete your placement.
Final Year
Year three aims to bring you to the level to enter the world of work by consolidating your knowledge and skills from years one and two. You could also work on an independent project in an area of your interest.
We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated. Before accepting any offers, please check the website for the most up to date course content. For full module details please check the course page on the Coventry University website.
*For further information please check the course page on the Coventry University website
Assessment methods
This course will be assessed using a variety of methods which will vary depending upon the module.
Assessment methods include:
Tests
Essays
Group work
Presentations
Reports
Projects
Coursework
Individual Assignments
The Coventry University Group assessment strategy ensures that our courses are fairly assessed and allows us to monitor student progression towards achieving the intended learning outcomes.
Tuition fees
Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Nutrition and dietetics
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Nutrition and dietetics
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
This is the subject you need to study if you want to become a dietician — an important job in the country’s healthcare sector, and the single most common job for nutrition graduates. We don’t have many graduates in nutrition every year and with the population becoming more aware of health and well-being and with many medical needs being addressed by the application of specific diets, this is likely to be an area of increasing demand in the future.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Nutrition and dietetics
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£24k
£28k
£30k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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