Who can your students actually call?
Think of a Year 12 about to spend £60,000 on a degree. Who can they talk to for an honest, no-agenda conversation with someone already on that exact course? For most students, the answer is no one. That’s the gap we close.
Register Your InterestConfidence for your students, evidence for your team
102 honest conversations across seven schools and colleges
Those 102 sessions were delivered by 99 different Insiders from 39 universities, so almost every student spoke to someone different, matched to their subject.
Confidence rose from 52% to 83% across 102 sessions in seven schools and colleges. (Already Doing It pilot, 2026.)
Honest conversations with someone already on the path your students are considering
A student books a 30-minute 1:1 video call with a Uni Insider: a current student or recent graduate studying the exact subject or at the university they’re considering. Someone a couple of steps ahead, not decades.
A prospectus and an open day are made by the university. They’re useful, and they’re also marketing. Students deserve a second source. Our Uni Insiders have no reason to sell them anything, so your students get the good and the bad, the real picture you can only get from someone living it.
Independent of university recruitment teams. We don’t represent any university, and we’re not paid to recommend anyone. Our Uni Insiders span 80+ universities and every major subject, and they’re trained to give the honest picture, the good and the bad, so your students always keep full, free choice of any university. Where a university funds sessions, it can ask us to prioritise particular courses and can ask for Uni Insiders from its own institution. It cannot choose which individual Insiders take part, brief them, or see what your students said. We tell students who funded their session.
ADI workshop, Gosford Hill Sixth Form
An independent perspective, alongside university outreach
Your students will hear from universities directly, and they should. We do something different: a one-to-one conversation with a student at a university that isn’t paying for a place, who is free to say what they found hard. Use us alongside your outreach visits, not instead of them.
How we stay independentWe make it easy to run
You host a booking session. We handle the rest: scheduling, sessions, follow-ups, and chasing survey completions so you don’t have to.
Students book in form time
Students browse Uni Insiders by subject, university, or area. With a school access code, it’s completely free to the student. Booking takes two minutes.
They reflect before the call
Before the session, every student fills in a short reflection: what they’re considering, what’s worrying them, and what they want to ask. This is the first read you get on what’s really on your cohort’s mind.
They talk, honestly
Each session is a private 30-minute 1:1 video call on Google Meet, from home. The real workload, university life, expectations versus reality, and what they’d do differently. Led by the student’s questions but never aimless.
Pictured: a live workshop demonstration where a Uni Insider joins the classroom on screen so students can see exactly what a session looks like before they book their own.
Top: Uni Insiders with Year 12 students, Wednesfield Academy. Bottom: what each student sees in their private 1:1.
You get the evidence
After the session, students complete a post-session reflection: how their confidence shifted, what they learned, and what they’d want to explore next. Everything flows into your Impact Report, delivered within 5 working days of your final session. Gatsby Benchmark evidence, formatted for Compass+. Hand it to SLT, to governors, to Ofsted. And every student keeps a Session Snapshot: a one-page summary of their session in their own words, with the next steps they committed to, ready to print or show a parent.
The Session Snapshot every student keeps (example shown)
Not a thank-you note. Actual intelligence.
The subjects your cohort is drawn to. What’s genuinely worrying them. How their confidence shifted. Who’d benefit from a follow-up. Data you can act on, not just a record of what happened.
Every Session Snapshot feeds your Impact Report, including the proportion of students who committed to a concrete next step, direct Gatsby Benchmark 3 evidence.
Every session feeds a dashboard built for your team
No spreadsheets, no chasing. Sessions delivered, how your students’ confidence shifted, the subjects your cohort is exploring, your Pupil Premium reach, and who would benefit from a follow-up, all updating as sessions complete, with your Gatsby-aligned Impact Report a click away.
Illustrative preview. Your dashboard shows your own school’s data, and only the sections you are set up to see.
Scales from one school to a national Trust
Whether you’re a single academy or a Trust with dozens of schools, ADI works the same way. We manage it centrally or distribute to individual Academy Leads.
Centralised or distributed
Manage access codes centrally across your Trust, or let each school run their own cohort. Either way, you get an aggregated report across the whole estate.
Information equity
Ensure every student across your Trust has access to honest insight, regardless of their background, location, or the size of their school’s careers team.
Transition risk intelligence
Your aggregated report identifies patterns across the Trust: which subjects cause the most anxiety, where confidence is lowest, and which students need follow-up.
Built around your priorities
Empowers students to make confident, informed choices about post-18 pathways through evidence-backed peer insight
Extends high-quality 1:1 guidance across your entire estate without increasing staff workload or administrative overhead
Private, near-peer conversations that break through the intimidation barrier, allowing students to ask the questions they won’t ask staff or formal alumni
A low-risk, scalable model designed for rapid pilots, targeted interventions (e.g. Pupil Premium), or whole-cohort support
Our student-led booking system encourages independence and accountability. Sessions take place outside curriculum hours to protect teaching time
“I joined ADI because I know how valuable it is to hear honest advice from someone who’s recently been in your position. In engineering especially, there’s often a gap between expectations and reality. To me, peer mentoring is about being open about that, sharing both the challenges and the opportunities so students can make confident, informed decisions about their future.”
Our mentors aren’t just university students, they are ADI-trained. Every mentor completes our comprehensive training course, ensuring they understand the standards of safeguarding and professional conduct required. They offer unbiased perspective on course expectations, university life, transitions and what they’d do differently.
Three ways to bring ADI to your school
School programme
Fund a programme across your sixth form. Year 12 to explore, Year 13 to decide. Full Impact Report included, formatted for Gatsby and Compass+.
Funded places
We hold a small number of funded places for Pupil Premium and disadvantaged students. Limited, but they exist, because that’s the mission.
University-sponsored
We’re building partnerships where universities fund sessions through their outreach budgets. Register your interest to be first in line.
Our Uni Insider opportunity has been approved by 37 UK university careers services.
All Uni Insiders are identity verified and complete a mandatory safeguarding assessment. Our safeguarding framework is aligned with the principles of Keeping Children Safe in Education. View safeguarding policy
Let’s have a proper conversation
Tell us about your school and what you’re looking for. We’ll come back to you with the right option, no pressure, no hard sell.
