The prospect of making new friends when you start uni is definitely a daunting one and can be especially daunting to those with disabilities.
However, there are ways to make the step to starting uni and making friends a little easier and this is what I did myself before starting my course and it helped a huge amount to make friends.
In the April/May before starting my course I joined an ‘offer-holders’ Facebook group for the university I was planning to go to. I then 
simply made a post on there asking if there were any others in the group on the same course as me and if they wanted to join a group chat together.
It took a few months to get talking properly but by June a large group of us were talking every day, having almost weekly video calls together and by the time we got to uni, we knew each other really well and had planned to meet the second night after we got there. I also made some friends over this time that I felt close with and was able to talk to about my disability a little bit and the things that I struggle with and it made a huge difference for me when I got there because I knew that I had that extra support there already.
What about making friends on a course with a uni you may not get accepted into?
- Instead, you could look at just forming/joining a group chat once you have your acceptance letter later in the year. Personally, I just wanted that bit longer to get to know people even if there was a risk that I didn’t get the choice I wanted.
- Often universities will have an offer holders group and then a freshers group for those who have been accepted so you could post in or find a post in either once you’ve been accepted. As I was the one who created my course’s group chat, I found that once people were accepted into courses, a lot more people did want to join the chat so don’t think just because you want to wait that you won’t have any chance of getting to know people.
What if I want to wait until I get to university to make friends? And how do I do this?
Many people do just wait until they’re at uni to make friends and it can work just as well as talking online before starting. Personally I just found that trying to make friends before coming really helped me feel a lot less anxious about starting, especially as covid was still pretty bad when I started so it was even harder to make friends in person but obviously it’s a lot easier now restrictions are eased and pretty much gone.
Even though parties can be a great way to make friends for some people, please don’t worry, if you’re not really someone that enjoys them, there are still plenty of ways to make friends
.
These include:
- Just speaking to course mates during labs, fieldwork, seminars, tutorials, etc. Speaking to people that are all really interested in the same topic as you, often for the first time, is really amazing and makes it so much easier to find things to start conversations.
- Often during the first few weeks of your course, the unis will often put on events for each course/ group of similar courses to let you get to know one another, the academics teaching you, etc, and many find it really fun and helpful.
- One of the best ways to make friends is through societies. Unis will often have over 100 different societies and they can be academic, sports societies, hobby related, anything you can think of really. And if there isn’t a society for something, you can make one!
- I know some unis will also create support groups for people who are neurodivergent to meet similar individuals but as I am not neurodivergent myself I do not know how helpful these are.
Although making friends can be scary, there are so many ways to meet people before and during university and though it can take time, you will find people and make great friends!
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