Your future
The sport, fitness, health and leisure sectors are booming and provide a variety of careers for sports and exercise science graduates.
Typical career destinations include healthcare, teaching, and the health and fitness industries or postgraduate study. Our courses develop your skills in numeracy, information technology, communication and time management, which are important to all employers.
Our recent graduates have taken up a wide range of roles, including:
- senior fitness instruction and personal training
- coaches and performance analysts for football clubs including Southend United, West Ham United, Dag and Redbridge, and Derby County, and for rugby clubs including Colchester RFC
- health and safety executive for HM Inspector of Health and Safety
- Essex netball development officer for England Netball
- girls' and women's football development officer for a local council
- health improvement facilitator for a primary care trust
Other graduates now work in the fields of sports performance, sports management and sports development, health care, teaching, and the health and fitness industry. Many also undertake further postgraduate study.
We also work with our University's Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.
Sport scholarships
Sport scholarship applications for October 2025 entry are now closed.
Our Performance Sport Scholarship programme has been created for talented athletes playing at regional, national or international level, and offers a range of benefits. We want students competing in our focus sports - basketball, volleyball, tennis and football - as well as other team sports and as individual athletes to contribute to our performance sport programme.
Our scholarships can include fee discounts of up to 100%, offered to athletes who demonstrate sporting excellence. Athletes who are awarded the scholarship may also receive a host of other benefits, including:
- free kit
- access to state-of-the-art facilities
- performance coaching
- the option to live in our Athlete Village (accommodation fees may vary)
- a support package valued up to £1,500
These benefits are designed to help athletes focus on their training and development, and to enable you to reach your full potential alongside your studies.