I didn't know anyone who had applied to Cambridge.
Me neither.
I am the first generation, first person in my family to go to uni in general.
So I didn't know anyone who applied to uni and I certainly
didn't know anyone who would applied to Cambridge.
Schools and sixth forms will have people who know about the application process,
whether they've done it themselves or not, they'll know the very intimate details
about the whole thing.
And so talking to them is a really great way of finding out what that's like.
Also, you can find people online who have applied.
You can find people's brothers and sisters.
Or you can watch like YouTube videos of people who have applied
and have got there, talking through how they've done that.
And that's a really great way to start understanding what Cambridge is like.
This was quite a big thing, even when I got here,
because initially it makes it a lot more scary
not having anyone familiar that you can come with, but
you do settle in and you get to benefit from other people's
friends that they've known and make friends of your own
completely separate from your background and everyone at home.
And it's quite nice just having that independence and
making your own friends and making your own pathway through the journey.
But definitely do not worry about not knowing anyone
who's even applied to uni before
because there will be people out there who can give you help and support for that
and you can definitely do a really, really excellent application
without having your mum go to Cambridge.
Are extra-curriculars important?
Yeah, so,
yeah, I really thought that, like, they're going to want to know
that I'm not just studying in my room all day like a gremlin.
So I thought, I need to have about a thousand talents
to think that I'm worthy of Cambridge.
They don't care. They really don't care.
Like surprisingly so, I think when I was interviewing with other universities,
they were quite keen to know what you were doing outside of your studies but
Cambridge, like, they might ask you about it in your interview.
They might be like, okay, so I see that you like to draw,
but that's I think
they more want you to have a good coping mechanism for if things get stressful.
And if your coping mechanism
happens to be doing more reading about your subject.
Sure. Great.
They'll probably love it, but they don't care
if you have a thousand other talents.
They just want to know that you can come here and want
to stay here and want to study here.
Do I need to do extra reading?
I worried about this a lot, especially, like, during my interview
and when you've got a lot of humanities students there, I think
they read a lot and they have to, they have to show that they're really
interested in their subject.
As someone from STEM, it's not as important.
I think it's still really important.
They want to know that like you actually really want to do the subject.
If you have been interested in your course, you will have heard a lot
about it, even if it's not through direct intensive reading.
So just by keeping up to date with news, talking to friends
about it, or researching specific topics of interest.
The main thing is that you can keep up with your A-levels and your GCSE subjects
and have a good understanding of those.
Will they accept someone from my background?
The answer's yes, unequivocally.
Background really
does not come into the application process as much as you would think it would.
I was terrified that they were going to hear the fact
that I said 'bath' and not 'bath', and say, ‘Oh, no, we're not letting you in.’
Did not make any difference.
A lot of the imagery around universities like Cambridge, very historic,
and in that sense, I didn't really see many people
from my background here when I was applying,
but I was really eager to just try and change that.
I think there are a variety of backgrounds that come to Cambridge and obviously
in our society certain backgrounds do make it a lot more difficult
to get opportunities compared to others, and that's a fact that you can't ignore.
But there are measures in place
to make sure those things don't have as much of an effect as they used to.
They accept people from all backgrounds.
It really doesn't matter what background you're from.
You just need to show that you're interested and you’re keen.
I got in and I am from the roughest area in the north
I could probably find, so I promise that background is not really relevant.