Universities have a responsibility to prepare their graduates for life within the workplace and community; students and future employers expect that graduates have developed a certain skillset. One way to develop these skills is through students as partners initiatives, which are projects and programmes that position the expertise of the student as equally important to the expertise of the staff/faculty partner. Engaging in students as partners initiatives has been shown to carry numerous benefits for students beyond facilitating employability and has been adopted across many higher education institutions. This study examined the effects of students’ involvement in students as partners initiatives on their perceptions of their development; students’ perceptions were collected on seven graduate attributes - communication, academic writing, teamwork, critical thinking, content knowledge, quantitative skills, and qualitative skills – and on students’ sense of identity and sense of belonging. Students across four Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Schools at the University of Edinburgh, as well as students who have completed specific partnership initiatives, were reached out to through questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews. Students reported that partnership allowed them to explore and build confidence in skills they would otherwise not focus on at that point in their education. Students also perceived partnership to be central in helping them build their sense of belonging within their discipline or School and in helping them identify their academic community. Similarly, students who engaged in partnership reported a more diversified identity beyond their student identity. Students also shared their perceptions on how the COVID19 pandemic has affected their studies and the mitigating effects that partnership often had in helping them deal with these changes. Finally, the study explored instances where students participated in what they perceived to be partnership, but which typically would not be labelled as partnership within the academic literature. Importantly, students reported gaining some of the same outcomes from these perceived partnerships as the literature commonly reports for students as partners initiatives, suggesting that experiences do not need to meet the criteria of full partnership to offer positive outcomes. This study further identified two elements present in many perceived partnerships, which could be encouraged throughout the formal, credit-bearing undergraduate curriculum to improve outcomes of more students.