The collegiate system
For those of you who don’t know, Durham is a collegiate university with seventeen different colleges, which means that once you’re allocated a college this is where you stay for first year (unless you live out) and this becomes a kind of community for the rest of your time at university. For the…
If only there was an opportunity to get a real feel of what university life is like before applying…
Sutton who?
I had never heard of the Sutton Trust until my head of sixth form mentioned that that day was the deadline to apply to this residential which sounded like it would be of interest to me. I had never heard of…
The American dream was not a reality for me
I dreamed of the American university lifestyle like the ones you see in the movies. I had my whole life planned, I even visited the university I wanted to go to, but then the reality of the cost, mixed with the course complexities hit and I thought my dream and future were…
In the summer of 2021, I attended (virtually, of course) Durham’s STEP programme. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, STEP stands for Space to Explore Potential. It’s a programme which aims to give students of Black heritage the opportunity to experience what university is really like, meet other like-minded…
I knew Durham was the right place for me
During the summer of 2019, when I was in year 12, I took part in the Sutton Trust (ST) Summer School to explore my interest in English.
For me, the totality of my experience at Sutton Trust confirmed that Durham University was the place for me. The mentors I interacted with, who…
After a long post-GCSEs summer, university wasn’t the first thing on my mind. However, I was fortunate enough that my sixth form was proactive in getting us to think about life after sixth form. At the start of y12, one of the teachers in my school let me know I was eligible for the Supported Progression (SP) scheme at Durham…
Narrowing down what university you should apply to from over 150 choices nationwide can be an intimidating task. With so many options you need to know you are making the right decision! To help, here is how four of our Summer School mentors chose the universities they applied to, and how they eventually ended up at…
Not far to travel
Your first day at university tends to be one of the few, monumental moments in life that you will never forget. For me, it was a day I had waited long and hard to experience and it certainly lived up to every expectation that my childhood self had dreamed about for so long. Before we set off, we had to…
When I arrived in Durham on the 30th of September 2018, there was no way I could’ve predicted what lay ahead of me. A degree change, a global pandemic and two extra years to finish my undergrad were nowhere on my peripheral – but even if it was, I’m not sure it would’ve changed how my first day went at…
The last few years of my life have come full circle. I began my journey to Durham way back when I was in Year 12 on Supported Progression, an access programme for local students who may otherwise be disadvantaged in applying to university. The week I spent on a residential at Van Mildert college in 2017 was amazing and made me…
