"Having someone there that you can speak to in confidence"

Dean graduated this summer with first class honours and started work in financial services audit at Johnston Carmichael two weeks ago. He is the first person in his family to go to university.

"I came from a background where university wasn't the norm," he says. Working out how to get there took some doing, because nobody at home had done it before and could explain how it worked.

The bursary mattered. But when Dean talks about what made the difference, he starts somewhere else. "Having someone there that you can speak to in confidence when you're going through that big transition from school to university is definitely very beneficial."

That support only does its job if it lasts, so when a student joins the programme, we commit to them for the length of their degree. That means a mentor for up to four years rather than a term, an Additional Support Fund for the things nobody can plan for, and opportunities to meet and hear from firms as they get closer to applying. Dean's first and his job in audit came at the end of all of that, rather than from any one part of it. Promising a student up to four years of support means we need some confidence about year four as well as year one. Regular giving gives us that, which means we can keep saying yes to new students and widen what we are able to offer them.

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Dean wanted to pass on a thank you. "What you do is amazing, and it helps someone like me and plenty of others to find their feet in a world where they may not have had the opportunity to. Please keep doing what you're doing."

Setting up a monthly gift is one of the most useful ways to help us keep doing exactly that.

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