With my application form almost completed and all required documents ready to be uploaded, I was finally ready to press the submit button and send out the application to my top five university choices. As everything was neatly prepared, I found some time for myself to pursue the answers for a few questions which I formed during the application process.
 
The most prominent one was not: Am I the only one applying to a university in the UK? No, I already knew of friends interested in studying in the UK. The most important question for me was related to the choices I made when it came to picking universities. I wanted to know whether I would be going to either of them alone, or with someone else. After a few enquiries, I discovered that my friends’ choices did not match any of mine. As a result, I decided to join the Universities’ groups on social media and get to know people from there. Finding and joining the groups was easy enough and needless to say, I kind of started my “virtual” fresher year one year earlier as I began socialising with other prospective international students and the opportunity to discuss the application process and our university choices.
 
Retrospectively, I can only be grateful for my inquisitive nature as I am still keeping in touch with some of those people and I also ended up going to university with two of them. Also, I believe that as an international student, it really helped to have a start to my social life abroad prior to arriving there as it made me feel less alone and more prepared for when I would have arrived in the UK.
 
Within one week, I could say that I also tested my ability to fit into the British multicultural environment and its diversified student community. My wish to study in the UK was once again strengthened by my belief that I do belong there and therefore, after proof-reading my entire application form, I submitted it and willed myself to patiently wait for the results.