TAP student from North London, Yemane, spoke to Money Box Live about how he received support and guidance to choose the right course to apply for.
“You were thinking of an apprenticeship scheme because that’s practical and you like that sort of thing, but then you suddenly discovered there were other options, can you just tell me how that happened and how your mind was changed?”
“Hi Adam. Firstly I was looking to do a more practical thing, so uni was like not my main choice. I was applying to different apprenticeships like the Deloitte one because I was looking at accountants like Deloitte, PWC, and then and also I had UCAS, I was also applying to universities as well. I wanted to go to uni but I wanted it to be practical, so I’m part of The Access Project which is a charity that does tutoring, so my tutor helped me find a university which is my firm choice right now, Reading. What I’d like to do is a BA in Accounting and Business which is a four-year course but every year you do four months paid placement with PWC, that was actually what I wanted to do. Because I wanted to go to uni, but it also had an apprenticeship.”
“Am I right in saying that you were under the misconception in a way that if you applied for a degree that was not very practical and suddenly you realised that your misconception was wrong, is that a fair reflection?”
“Yes, because I actually thought unis were just like, from what I heard you just do work you don’t do anything practical…”
Maria Neophytou, Acting CEO at Impetus spoke about how important it is for young people to have guidance about choices in education that will affect their future.
“What Yemane’s example shows is the importance of quite early on getting good advice and guidance to young people because they’re having to make some pretty big decisions at quite a young age and if you haven’t got parents who’ve been to university or who know about apprenticeships to advise you at home and if you don’t have access to the right advice you could find yourself funnelled in particular routes without know what your options are, so I think it’s great the work that charities like The Access Project do.”