‘I fled from a war and now I’m going to Cambridge...I just can’t believe it,’ says Southfields teen on A-level results day

 
University place: Sara Khoshnaw
Josh Pettitt|Matt Watts14 August 2014

Delighted Sara Khoshnaw today spoke of her joy after her A-level success, saying: “I just can’t believe I’m going to Cambridge.”

Sara, 18, from Southfields, south-west London, fled war-torn Kurdistan with her parents and two older sisters when she was just eight.

She is now going on from Ark Putney Academy to Cambridge to study medicine after achieving As in further maths, biology and chemistry and an A* in maths, and said: “There was a war going on and my parents decided to escape the country so we were asylum seekers when we arrived here. I never thought I would make it to Cambridge from that starting point.

“The situation there is obviously not great at the moment, so I’m really glad I’m here.”

Fellow pupil Marie Mathison, 18, from Wimbledon, only came to London three years ago from Venezuela. Speaking no English, she quickly had to settle in and took all her GCSEs in one year.

Today she achieved A*s in biology, chemistry and Spanish and an A in maths and is going to study dentistry at Plymouth.

She said: “I was really nervous starting school and I had no idea what people were saying at first, so I just stood there and smiled. I had to do all my GCSEs in one year, so I’ve had to work really hard to get to this point.

“I’m so happy, I was not expecting these results at all. I was really worried about biology, but I somehow got an A* in it.”

In Newham, Rumana Ali, 18, is set to be the first person in her family to go to university after winning a place to study history at Oxford. She said her taxi driver father and her mother, a housewife, were incredibly proud of her after she got two A*s and an A.

Rumana, a Newham Sixth Form College pupil, added: “For me to get to university really is a dream come true.”

Gerda Kildisiute, 19, who also comes from Newham, has won a place at Oxford despite living on her ownand having to support herself working in a fruit and veg supermarket in Hackney.

She arrived from Lithuania two years ago to live with her father, but after a disagreement moved out and had been supporting herself since.

Her offer was for two A*s and an A, but she just got 3As. Fortunately she was still given her place by Oxford.

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