Demilade Idowu-Agida is an 18-year-old student based in Essex. She went through the UCAS application process and received two offers to study medicine at university, but then discovered she could not accept them due to her immigration status. Interview by Michaela Makusha.
As a child in Nigeria, I was an unlikely candidate for medical school. I hated going to the doctor because I was scared of needles. But years later, I wanted to be in a position to help people and so I knew I wanted to be a doctor.
I moved to the UK in 2023, with my parents and siblings. My mother is a private care worker and my dad is a healthcare assistant in the NHS. Coming into secondary school, with only a year to learn everything in time for my GCSEs, was tricky. To fulfil my dream of becoming a doctor, I had to work twice as hard – and it paid off. I got good grades, made it into sixth-form and applied for university. Medical school was finally within my grasp.
After I sent my application, I had to complete a tuition fee questionnaire. Then, I received a fateful email: “As your current visa is a limited leave type, you do not appear to meet the eligibility criteria for home fees.”
I was stunned. Perhaps it was naive, but my parents live and work in the UK. They pay taxes here, like everyone else. I wasn’t even aware of my “limited” visa status or the implications it would have on my ability to study.
I did some digging and it took weeks for me to properly understand it. I learned that I’m listed as a “skilled worker child dependent,” under my mum’s visa, who has the skilled worker visa. My dad is a spousal dependent, my brother is a child dependent like me, and my older sister is separately here on a student visa doing her master’s.
While I will have been a UK resident for three full years before the start of my university course, I haven’t got indefinite leave to remain yet, and I can only apply for that status after five years in the UK. This means that I can only enter university as an international student now, or as a home student at least two years from now.
For me to start on a medicine course in September, the fees are not £9,000 a year, as a home student would pay, but £50,000 a year. For a five-year course, a home student would pay £45,000 for the entire course – which is still extremely expensive – and that figure wouldn’t even cover my first year. Most of the British public genuinely has no idea that this is the reality for many people in the UK. My school friends were shocked when I explained my situation to them.
I looked for scholarships. There is not one single fully-funded scholarship for a student in my position in the UK. Not one. Most medical school scholarships are only partially funded. I found one foundation that offered support, but applicants only learn whether they’ve received funding in October – after the course has already started in September.
I applied for 13 different apprenticeships in healthcare instead, hoping to sidestep the fees entirely. I was rejected from all 13. I made it to a second interview for one, in Warrington. I travelled there twice from Essex, at my own cost, only to be told they were choosing one candidate out of 20.
In the end, the university that I received an offer from withdrew it because I couldn’t pay a £10,000 deposit two weeks before results day. I didn’t log into UCAS again until after results came out, missing the payment deadline I knew I could never make.
I thought I was alone, but when I shared my frustrations online, I received so many comments from people who experienced the same – children of people on visas, forced into years of limbo between school and higher education due to their immigration status.
I expect the reasoning behind not extending student loans to people with limited leave to remain was to prevent people taking the loan, getting the education and then leaving the country before paying it back. But plenty of UK students take out student loans and move abroad with no intention of paying it back, which is arguably worse.
There is no way a family like mine could find £50,000 a year without a loan, let alone the £10,000 deposit. My parents already cover council tax, gas, electricity, water, the UK immigration health surcharge and more. No amount of working extra hours can close a £50,000 gap. All I am asking for is to pay what a home student pays. Not a loan. Not a free ride. The same fee as my classmates who happen to have been born here.
One hurtful commenter asked: “Why would you call the UK your home as an immigrant?”
My mother didn’t leave me behind in Nigeria so why would she send me back there alone now? People don’t seem to understand that home is not just where you were born. It’s where you’re accepted and where the people you love are.
Applying for indefinite leave to remain costs around £3,000 per person. There’s a “life in the UK” test you have to pass, and if you fail it, you pay again to retake it.
So, I’m not going to university this September. I’m taking a forced double gap year. In these next two years, I hope to get a healthcare assistant job in the NHS, to stay close to medicine, and not lose the drive that got me here. I’ll go to every work experience event, every talk, every opportunity that I can. I’ll travel when I can and see more of the world. Then, in 2028, I’ll start again from scratch: the life in the UK test, the UCAT again, the whole application again, hoping the rules haven’t changed.
We all know the NHS is desperately short of doctors. And here I am, someone who wants nothing more than to become one, blocked for two years from training. There is something deeply ironic about being told to wait by the system that needs me more than ever.
If you keep making it impossible for young people to build a future here, don’t be surprised when people with something to offer take their talent elsewhere.
For now, I am trying to be optimistic about my future. Despite all the barriers, I will be a doctor one day, I know it.
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