University freshers share advice on friendship, finances and finding your path

The results envelope arrives. The university place is confirmed. The student finance application is submitted. And then, in the quiet hours before everything changes, the doubt creeps in.

This August, a record number of 18-year-olds will walk onto university campuses across the UK for the first time. Many of them are carrying the same bundle of worries: Will I know anyone? Will I be homesick? Can I actually afford this? Have I chosen the right course? BBC News spoke with current students about the anxieties that kept them awake before they arrived, and what they discovered once they got there.

Isaak Hewitt moved to Cardiff knowing nobody. He describes it as stepping into a completely blank slate, and the prospect of making friends for the first time since secondary school terrified him. But he found that shared classes created natural openings for conversation. Sitting next to someone in an English lecture meant you already had something to talk about. Now 20, Isaak's advice is straightforward: act confident even when you're not, and push yourself to show up. Grace Morrell faced a different problem. As a commuter student in Nottingham, she wouldn't have the built-in social structure of halls or shared flats. She joined her student magazine, the radio society, and the theatre group instead. "A lot of my friendships come from putting myself out there and just doing what I love," she says, "which I found was a bit hard at times, especially when you don't know anyone." Mustafa Dassu, 19, discovered that the WhatsApp groups created before freshers' week actually worked. People were messaging constantly between results day and arrival, and friendships formed in those early digital conversations often lasted well beyond the first semester.

Homesickness is another phantom that haunts the weeks before departure. Izzy Garcez, 20, worried she would desperately miss her family, the rhythm of evenings together, the simple comfort of shared meals and television. But she found the reality was different. "You'll make friends so quickly at uni," she reflects, "and you're going to get to a point where you realise 'I've not called my parents in a week', and you'll realise that suddenly you're not actually missing them anymore—or not missing them nearly as much."

Money is perhaps the most concrete worry. Kieran Miller, a journalism student from Swansea, was anxious about finances, so he did the practical work: he compared student bank accounts and chose one offering a free 16-25 Railcard, then signed up for every student discount scheme he could find. With his mum's help, he made a budget before moving away. But he also learned something harder: that first maintenance loan payment feels enormous until you realize it has to stretch across months. "When you start uni and you're living away from your family and you've got this new sense of freedom," Kieran says, "it was really difficult to stay strict financially because you want to make mates with people. Someone might invite you to go for food or to go for a drink—and you're like, 'I don't really want to say no because this is a chance to connect with someone.'" Universities offer scholarships and bursaries worth investigating, but the real lesson is that freedom and friendship have a cost, and that cost needs to be planned for.

Avery Hewitt worried about juggling an English and drama degree with part-time work and playing in a university band. Speaking with a student ambassador before arrival helped her understand what was actually realistic. She threw herself into everything in the first semester and quickly burned out. "I had to make responsible choices about what societies or club nights I needed to cut back on," she says. The lesson: you can do a lot, but not everything, and knowing the difference matters.

Then there's the question that arrives even after the place is confirmed: What if I've chosen wrong? Pia Subong started at the University of East Anglia in biochemistry and realized partway through that it wasn't her subject. She switched to film and English. "You're having these feelings for a reason," she says. Fatima Qureshi took a gap year before starting, uncertain whether law was actually what she wanted or whether she should have chosen biochemistry or pharmacy instead. "It was the best thing I could have done," she reflects. The system allows for these corrections—you can change courses before you arrive, use clearing to apply elsewhere, or step back and reconsider.

Mel Kennedy, a student wellbeing adviser at Ulster University, notes that anxiety about change is normal. "It can be scary," she says. Lindsay While, at Teesside University, adds that for many students, university is the first genuinely unknown environment they've entered. "Everybody's experience is completely different," she says. Universities offer counselling, study support, budgeting advice, and financial assistance. You can reach out before you even arrive.

But there's one more conversation happening in the background: the one about whether university is the right path at all. Aashi Soni, 20, from Leicester, knew it wasn't for her. Sixth form and college pushed university as the default next step, but she turned down her offers and took a gap year to find an apprenticeship instead. She now works toward a Level 6 degree apprenticeship in sales at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, gaining real-life experience and mentoring alongside her studies. Meenu Hettigama started a creative media course after school, dropped out, and is now two years into a management degree apprenticeship at Amazon. "University is not the only pathway," Meenu says, "even if maybe you think it's the most conventional or it is what your family want you to do." Apprenticeships can be found through government websites, LinkedIn, Indeed, and recruitment events. The point is this: there are more routes forward than the one everyone assumes you'll take.