Poppy overcomes homelessness and tragedy to gain Cambridge place after three failed A Level attempts

The 22-year-old will study BA (Hons) English at Cambridge’s Wolfson College from September after gaining Distinction grades every step of the way on her Access to Higher Education in Humanities course with York College.

It represents an incredible achievement by Poppy, who thought her childhood dream of studying at Cambridge had been kiboshed by a series of circumstances that would have spelled the end of that ambition for most mere mortals.

Having not actually sat her GCSEs due to the Covid pandemic, Poppy was then left reeling after the death from the virus of a family friend she was living with at the time while studying her A Levels.

That devastating incident, coupled with falling ill herself due to a personal issue, caused Poppy to drop out of her school’s sixth form close to Leeds.

She then tried to resume her A Levels remotely with an online company but found that she required more support.

Her autism diagnosis followed, along with a period of time where she was without a permanent base and sleeping on her grandmother’s sofa.

Amid all this upheaval, she gave A Levels a third chance – this time at York College in September 2024 – only to suffer concussion when she banged her head on a car door.

With her illness intensifying again, too, Poppy was left with little alternative but to abandon her studies again.

Showing remarkable resilience, Poppy returned to Sim Balk Lane last summer to enrol on our Humanities Access course, choosing English Literature and History as her main two subjects and Analysing Short Stories as her third smaller unit.

This time, with the support of tutors Alison Willis and Adam Tomes and financial assistance from the Adult Skills Fund via the York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority, she has finally been able to fulfil her academic potential in spectacular fashion, culminating in her successful application to one of the world’s most famous Higher Education institutions. 

“I'd always kind of wanted to go to Cambridge and, a few weeks ago, I actually found some prospectuses at home that I’d ordered from there years ago, but everything became a bit of a mess and really uncertain when I started sixth form,” she recalled. “I'd struggled through school anyway for personal issues, which I didn't know what they were at the time.

“When I was 17, the person I was living with - a family friend – then died of Covid, so that was really traumatic. My whole house had Covid and everybody was ill.

“My dad went to hospital and, not long after, people from the hospital were then coming into our home to take my family friend's body away. I tried to get back into academics after that but struggled.

“I started doing my A Levels online but needed more support really. I was then diagnosed with autism, so that was a whole other thing that I had to process.

“I kept giving up, trying again and then giving up. The diagnosis meant I could get more support when I came to College last year for my A Levels, but there were more reasons why things just didn’t work out and I felt I’d kind of failed again.

“I got the concussion injury getting into a car. Then, I got really ill again, so it felt like just one thing after another and, with my autism, I got really stressed out when I started to get behind with my work.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself because I know what I am capable of and I get really annoyed if something holds me back.”

Poppy had seen enough of York College, though, to realise that it was the right environment to give education one last try, with Alison even convincing her that Cambridge was still a realistic target.

“I had a lot of personal issues still going on when I came back,” she reasoned. “I knew I really wanted to go to university, but I didn’t have it in my head that I was going to Cambridge - I felt that was out of reach.

“But, when I came to enrol, that was the first time I met Alison. At that point, I was going to do History instead of English but, when I started speaking to her about books, she told me she thought I should do Literature and should still aim for Cambridge.

“I ended up doing that and it worked out! In an academic sense, I knew I was capable of doing a degree - I just didn’t know how different universities perceived adult courses.

“Now I’ve done the Access course, I think they are brilliant, especially this one, because it’s really hard to find Humanities access courses. I've lived in a few places because, after my family friend died, that’s when I ended up homeless for a little bit.

“I lived in my Nanna’s living room for a while until we found a nice place in Thirsk, which is where I am now. I’d been living in Bradford before that and, trying to find anywhere that offered Humanities courses for adults nearby, was really hard.

“That's why we ended up moving closer to York when we were looking for a house and I finally got my happy ending!”

On the prospect of now studying at Cambridge in September, along with three of her Access course classmates – Maurice Cooper, Kierran Horsfield and Isaac Lees - who have also secured places there, Poppy added: “It’s very, very exciting. Hopefully, we’ll all meet up because I’ve never lived away from home and it will be nice to have some familiar people around.

“I hadn’t even been to Cambridge before – not even the town – before I went on my birthday last month for a look around.”

Poppy even argues, meanwhile, that she feels better prepared for the academic challenges that lie ahead than she would have done had she completed her A Levels.

To back up that belief, she cites a poetry unit that saw her compare Dolly Parton’s 1970s classic song Jolene with Ovid’s Metamorphosis and a Victorian verse!

“One of the biggest things with this course is that it prepares you so well for university,” she declared. “All of our assignments have to be fully referenced and well researched by ourselves.

“I think part of the reason why we’ve all got places at Cambridge is because the work that we've handed in for our applications has been fully referenced and researched. We also did a Study Skills class where we did different assignments, including delivering seminars and presentations that we'd chosen and written ourselves and started the year by doing academic writing on any subject that we wanted.

“You’re not just given loads of sheets of paper and told to memorise a bunch of facts to spit out. We’re encouraged to work outside of the classroom.

“For example, we didn’t study Dolly Parton’s Jolene in class, but I found information and interviews that looked at the song’s context, which meant I could then critically analyse it. That was for a poetry assignment and I really loved how open the question was.

“We looked at everything from ancient poetry to more modern verse and songs. We were asked to link three from different periods with one theme, so I ended up writing about Jolene, a Victorian poem by Christina Rossetti called Maude Clare and an ancient one from Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

“They’re not things that you would think to put together, but I compared them all, with the theme of female rivalry and how that's encouraged within the patriarchy. Alison taught the English lessons in such a way that you could be as creative as you want and it was the same with Adam in History.”

Poppy also stresses that the Access course complemented her age and preferred means of learning, where assessment is conducted at regular intervals throughout the one-year full-time course rather than in exam conditions at the end of it.

“The way the course is graded and structured works better for my brain and my autism,” Poppy pointed out. “I don’t like when everything rests on a final test when, if you're having a bad day, it just completely messes you up and you end up having to pay for resits and everything.

“After everything I've been through, I also felt like I was being treated like an adult, which makes a big difference. When I came here to do my A Levels last year, I was 20 and, even though it’s not many years apart, being in a class with 16-year-olds didn’t really feel comfortable.

“My mum wanted me to do A Levels, because she felt there's a stigma around Adult courses and Access courses, but there shouldn’t be. It’s got me into Cambridge and I’ve had offers from Edinburgh and Lancaster, which are also brilliant universities.

“That shows that an Access course can absolutely get you to these places.”

The quality of tuition and support Poppy has received at College has also been instrumental in that journey.

“Both Alison and Adam are incredible and their teaching is brilliant,” she enthused. “They work together as well, because the timelines of the themes we were working on in both English and History often coincided, which helped give us a deeper understanding.

“For example, at the beginning of the year, we did a module on Communism and Fascism in History and, then, the first book we read in English was Small Island by Andrea Levy, which had a lot of Marxist theory themes running through it, so the course is wonderfully designed.

“Alison has been really supportive, too. I had some issues in January when I got really ill and had to miss a few weeks.

“I thought everything was happening again and I might have to drop out, but she stopped that from happening. She kept messaging me and sending me work, so I could still get my assignments done, even though I was in hospital.

“Both Alison and Adam have really understood that things happen in our lives outside of College and, when I’ve needed some time away, they’ve helped me catch up. That support and interaction with the tutors was what I really needed.”

Completing the course in nine months rather than the two-year timeline for A Levels was also an added bonus with Poppy reasoning: “Doing it all in one year is definitely intense, but it's absolutely doable and I haven't struggled with time management.

“You just have to be mindful of how much time you're putting into things and how much time you want to put aside for yourself. There’s also the option to spread it over two years part-time if you can handle that better.”

Poppy had to submit a second My Cambridge application, meanwhile, to the one she had completed for UCAS, which also listed her alternative university choices.

She was then asked to complete a 90-minute test at home, which had to be emailed to Cambridge within five minutes of the finish time to avoid her application being voided.

An online interview followed days later with two academics from Cambridge, before she received the good news via email.

“I cried when I opened the email because, the day before, I’d been rejected from a different university, who I think are more focussed on typical academic journeys,” she revealed. “When that happened, I thought, ‘That's me done probably’ and then I found I’d got into Cambridge!”

Poppy already has ambitions, meanwhile, for what might follow after her three-year English course.

“I'm not 100% sure what I want to do career wise after the degree, but I do know that the main thing I’d like to do is stay in education,” she said. “The goal is to get a PhD, because that would be fun.” 

To learn more about our Access to Higher Education Diploma in Humanities, please click here

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