Increasing successful applications to university
OUR PROGRAMME DEVELOPS PARTICIPANTS’ EDUCATIONAL CONFIDENCE AND GOALS, GCSE ATTAINMENT AND FAMILIARITY WITH HIGHER EDUCATION, HELPING THEM TO OVERCOME THE POSSIBLE BELIEF THAT UNIVERSITY ISN’T FOR ‘PEOPLE LIKE ME’
Highlights from the latest impact report
This report celebrates our fifth cohort, who have applied to university at rates significantly higher than expected.
75% of participants applied to university, which is well above UCAS’ tailored benchmark for comparable peers at 62%
18% applied to Oxbridge, vs an expected 1%
5 received and accepted Oxbridge offers (17% vs 0%).
What we do
Through our holistic programmes, we support young people to make informed decisions about their future pathways and develop key skills, including the resilience to achieve their goals. Our main programme consists of three elements:
1) A Year 10 university residential, designed to increase participants’ familiarity with higher education
2) Monthly 1-to-1 online coaching to help participants identify and make progress towards their goals
3) A Year 11 residential focussed on GCSE revision to support academic attainment
Addressing key barriers
Our multi-intervention programme structure has been designed to address the following barriers to university access:
Low educational attainment
Low educational aspirations
Lack of self-belief, leading to assumptions that “university is not for people like me” or a fear of “not belonging” in a university environment.
University access
Our impact evaluation highlights university application and admissions data for our alumni from Cohort 5 (constituting 166 participants), who took part in our 2020-21 programme.
Our 2025 impact report found that 90 participants (54%) applied to Russell Group universities, compared to an expected 26%, which represent the UK’s 24 research-intensive universities, associated with high entry requirements and include some of the highest-ranked universities.
For more details on these findings please see the full report from 2025.
Building supportive networks
Our impact reporting shows our recent cohorts speaking of being proud and excited to have made friends, alongside the pride they felt in developing academically and gaining the confidence to apply to university.
Our participants' testimonials show that these new friendships not only boosted students' sense of belonging and self-esteem but also created peer networks where university became a shared, tangible goal, reflected in the increased percentage of participants who reported that more of their friends planned to go to university after the programme.
For more testimonials please see the full report from 2025.
Impact report
We measure our impact annually to evaluate progress towards overcoming the barriers to higher education and achieving our mission. Our impact report highlights what we can do to improve and refine our programme to make it as successful as possible.
Our latest report is on Universify students' university destination data, as part of the 2025 impact report.
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Registered Charity
number: 1167240
Company Registration
number: 10114061