One day I will become a doctor
By Majid Ahmed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/02/youthjustice.ukcrime

I grew up in Bradford, in one of the poorest wards in the country, sharing a three-bedroom house with six siblings and going to a predominantly white, failing school. It could have dimmed the brightest of my ambitions: so imagine my delight in achieving the best GCSE examination results in the history of the school and then going on to get four A-levels all at grade A. Most other people of my age would have been overjoyed at receiving such results, and I imagined their parents rewarding them with the latest iPod or a trip around the world. How did I celebrate receiving a set of results that most students would give their right arm for? With despondency and sadness.

It was only a few weeks before receiving my results that Imperial College London wrote to me, withdrawing their offer of a place on their medicine course; the news was devastating. I was crushed when I received this letter and relived the experience again on results day, as I had done what only a handful of my peers had done - I had defied the odds and gained the academic grades required to study medicine, which was a lifelong ambition of mine.

Living in a deprived community, where people my age have low aspirations and no role models apart from unemployed fathers and drug dealers, it's easy to fall in with the wrong crowd when the wrong crowd is all that there is to fall in with. I was duped into entering a property - aged 15, it's not hard to make the wrong decision. How I regret not asking more questions when some people who I thought were friends invited me in to their new "chill out pad". Within minutes of entering the property, I was arrested and confined to a police cell for the first time in my life.

Despite my innocence, I had no option but to plead guilty to the charge of burglary dwelling - I had to spare my mother the cultural shame of accompanying me through the courts. Things like this still have a profound effect on first generation Asian immigrants, as they pride themselves as good citizens with good children. One poor decision had cost me my place on the medicine course at Imperial College and I had lost the opportunity to realise my ambition of becoming a doctor.

Nothing in my life has been easy and I wasn't prepared to give up my dream of practicing medicine. While some students took a gap year and travelled the world, I decided to build a track record, which would demonstrate my honesty and integrity, and reapply to Imperial the following year. In the past 12 months, I have worked in a GP surgery and at Dixons City Academy - where I attended sixth form - handling sensitive information. Prior to the offence in November 2005 and after, I have continued to help those more disadvantaged than myself, most notably raising £11,000 for an outdoor recreational residential and working with disabled children.

It was last week that I learnt that my appeal to study medicine at Imperial College London had failed. Discretion and common sense had not prevailed in my case. Perhaps it would have done if my parents were professionals, who used professional friends to draft the appeal and guide me through the minefield of dead ends. In one of those moments when the whole world stops and everything falls silent, I was left wondering what more I could have done to convince the university of my desire to study medicine. I had sent with the appeal letters from my MP, local doctors that I had worked for, managers of charities that I have worked with, the principle at the sixth form I attended and the Bradford and Airedale PCT, all of whom supported my appeal. My MP, Terry Rooney, investigated my case and stated in his letter: "You will know of his singular offence in 2005 and following enquiries with his school, the police and his local community I am utterly convinced this was a one off."

The one outstanding fact in all my experiences of trying to gain a place to study medicine is that despite receiving £11bn of public funding, universities are accountable to no one. Bill Rammell, minister of state in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, paid no more than lip service to my case. So much for serving the public interest.

The Guardian article about my experiences published yesterday generated a great deal of interest from various media organisations. It was in one of these conversations with a journalist that I was asked: "What now, Majid?" The answer was instant, no thinking required: "I am going to fulfil my ambition and one day become a doctor." Where that determination comes from I don't know, but what I do know is that one day it will lead to me practising medicine.