On A-level results day last August, 18-year-old Kituza* from Manchester was staring at her computer screen, seeing her grades for the first time. Her results guaranteed her first-choice place at a university in Manchester, where she planned to study for a degree in Business. But despite the high emotions of the day, something made her take a moment to stop and think.
“I got my results and I was relieved,” she says, “but I knew that if I went to a university in Manchester, I probably wouldn’t move out [from home]. I felt I needed to go somewhere where I could actually challenge myself to be more independent, and open myself to new experiences and new environments. So I said: ‘You know what? I don’t want to do this. I need to go somewhere else.’”
