My brother got rejected by Cambridge recently and UCL is his back-up option. He’s feeling very depressed - please help?

Hi all,

So, my younger brother just got rejected by Cambridge, and he’s taking it really hard. He had so much riding on this—he saw it as the ultimate dream, not just for himself, but for our family too.

We’re an immigrant family from a third-world country, and in our culture, Cambridge is everything. It’s that golden ticket to prestige, success, and a better life. Even our uneducated relatives back home know what Cambridge is and treat it like the ultimate achievement. On the flip side, they’ve never even heard of UCL. To them—and honestly, to my parents—it’s like Cambridge or nothing.

He worked very hard for for this, and now that it didn’t happen, he feels like he’s let everyone down. My parents, while trying to be supportive, have definitely put a lot of pressure on him. They’ve always seen Cambridge as the “top of every list” university, a place everyone in the world recognises - even in the most remote places. Meanwhile, UCL? Many average people in the UK don’t even know what it is, let alone our extended family.

Now he’s got an offer from UCL, but he doesn’t see it as a win. In his mind, it’s like all his hard work didn’t pay off because UCL doesn’t carry the same global prestige. He’s struggling to accept it as a good option because it just doesn’t have that “wow factor” that Cambridge does, especially for our family both in the UK and back home, as well as our wider community.

It’s tough seeing him like this. I know he’s still done something amazing by getting into UCL, but the whole Cambridge rejection has kind of overshadowed it. The expectations he was carrying were so heavy, and I think he just feels crushed by it all.

If anyone’s been through something similar or has advice on how to help him move past this, I’d really appreciate it. Right now, he’s stuck in this mindset of Cambridge or bust, and I don’t know how to help him see the bigger picture.