'I felt like an imposter for getting into Cambridge University with scholarship'
Going to university is a massive step in many people's lives, often teaching independence and self sufficiency to teens who are leaving home for the first time.
Many can only dream of reaching their desired higher education institution, especially if it is a Russell Group university, which come with high grade expectations and hotly contested places.
Even fewer reach the dizzying heights of Oxford and Cambridge, commonly thought of as the top two universities in the UK - reserved for the elite and the academic.
Meiyang Jiang was shocked to find herself securing a place at the prestigious Cambridge to study law but without the backing of private education and generational precedent, the 19-year-old felt like an outsider with something to prove.
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After moving to England, Meiyang was placed in bottom sets for all her core subjects (pictured: Meiyang Jiang) (Meiyang Jiang)"I came to the UK at the age of nine and I didn't speak any English - I never thought about applying to Oxbridge," Meiyang told The Mirror.
Meiyang is the first in her family to attend any university, let alone Cambridge, but getting there hasn't been easy as she had to work incredibly hard to catch up with her classmates.
She said: "I was placed in bottom set for English, science and maths, and then I gradually moved myself up. It was a lot and in year seven, I was bullied because I didn't speak English very well.
"I wanted to work hard, so you can imagine in a bottom set environment, people who work hard will always be isolated."
This motivated Meiyang to work hard to bring herself out of that classroom and into ones where her peers supported her, by GCSE she had "tipped over the line" to get into a grammar school but was still told Oxbridge was out of reach.
"My teacher straight up said to my dad: 'don't even think about Oxbridge'," Meiyang, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, recalled. "That was a period when I was really down because I just got into sixth form and everybody was better than me with grades.
"I got this imposter syndrome and I was very, very down."
Despite her doubts and with support from her parents, the eager student attended a pathways to law lecture at Oxford and fought through her anxiety about "embarrassing" herself to answer a question, which she got right.
Meiyang's mental health crumbled under the workload and self-inflicted deadlines (L to R, Meiyang, Zhiyuan, Catlin) (Meiyang Jiang)This spurred Meiyang to work even harder writing essay after essay on her weakest subject, history. Covid meant her grade was stuck at a D but she convinced her teacher to raise the expected grade if she did better in the next test - Meiyang got an A*.
The 19-year-old took a gap year and applied for Cambridge, after an Oxford rejection set back, and started her first term in September 2022. She even won a scholarship from Zero Gravity, to support the costs of her living at Cambridge as simple things like joining a society to make friends is an added expense.
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However, Meiyang still felt she had to work twice as hard as other students to prove that she deserved her spot.
She shared: "I felt a little out of place because I saw my peers do really, really well with our first essay and I was like 'wow, so that's what everyone is like'. Everyone is so smart, I'm no longer in that environment where people don't care.
"There were so many deadlines that my supervisor set me and I set myself even more. My whole world was like a cage.
"It was just me restricting myself and I couldn't see the environment around me. The worst part is I couldn't really hear what other people were saying to me sometimes because I'm just like 'this is is my task, I'm working'.
"I was in London, networking with a law firm, and it took me a whole day. I came back home at 10pm and then I said to myself, I've just got to do another two hours of work - I was exhausted.
"Out of nowhere I started crying, you can tell when something is so destroying that nothing triggers it, you just start to cry. And then I realised 'why am I doing this to myself?'
"There's a side of confidence and that is the courage to fail. Even if I do fail, I have the confidence to get myself back."
Meiyang found support within her college, Robinson, as well as through Zero Gravity (L to R, friend Helena and Meiyang on campus) (Meiyang Jiang)The 19-year-old notes that this pressure was coming from her own "imposter syndrome", which is the feeling you experience when you think you're unqualified for or undeserving of your achievements. It wasn't coming from the university or others around her. "I think Cambridge gave me mental health issues at the beginning, but it was that challenge being resolved that made me a better person," she said.
Meiyang's internal saboteur still creeps up but she is much more balanced in her studying now, saying: "I still have impostor syndrome. There's so many people getting firsts, but at this rate, I really don't care. I feel like I have the courage to fail and I'm ready for like any challenges."
She recommends anyone who is looking at Oxbridge to work hard but also look at hints and tricks for passing the interviews. The 19-year-old now works with free social mobility platform Zero Gravity, supporting other students who are aiming for university.
"I've never had a platform so supportive the students," Meiyang said. "Zero Gravity provided me with a mentor and she was everything to me, without her I don't think I'd be able to get in.
"Potentials are something that you develop as you grow up. You don't have to the smartest person in the whole world, but just believe that you have potentials and they will come out one day."
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