Amna Khan
"The conversation was the quickest ever: “UCAS ID? Grades? Okay, you’re in!”. That was it, end of the story."
Course
Physics BSc (Hons)My original plan was to go to university in the South West of England as my family was moving to Bahrain. Instead, we made a last-minute decision to stay in the UK and live together. So, I was just thinking of places we could go that had a university. We had planned to move to Surrey before, so I said “okay, let’s go to Surrey – they have a university and they have colleges!” I rejected my university offer on results day and qualified for clearing, then I went onto the Clearing website, found Surrey and called them. The conversation was the quickest ever: “UCAS ID? Grades? Okay, you’re in!”. That was it, end of story.
I’m Muslim so I have to pray five times a day and Surrey has a huge prayer room which is unusual to me. Growing up it was always a struggle to find somewhere to pray. I have halal food and every restaurant on campus offers something halal – that’s really cool. It’s all so easy for me, I’ve never had this ease.
It was mostly my family situation that got me here as I didn’t know much about the university itself. But it was convenient how it all worked out – I really like my course and the environment here is much better than it would’ve been at the other university I was considering because of my religion.
The lecturers know my name now I feel comfortable with them. I’m used to the town now and Guildford is a really nice town. My comfort here is also brought by the friends you make as I’ve met a lot of nice people and, most importantly, I enjoy my course.
Don’t be scared that things didn’t work out the way you planned – for me, it actually worked out better than what I had planned.
If I had to think in hindsight, this actually seems like a better situation than if I’d gone to my other choice of university. Don’t be sad that it didn’t work out how you originally intended and really accept the university as your home now. No matter where you end up there will be something beautiful about it.
