Who we are.
We are a not-for-profit project empowering students to share their own first-hand advice about applying to university.
By sharing free, first-hand advice, directly from current students, we can help disadvantaged young people to navigate university applications with confidence.
Our Team
InsideUni is directed and managed by a small team of Hub staff, and our network of 4,000 volunteer students across the UK.
Tommy Gale
Co-Founder
Tommy co-founded InsideUni while he was a student at Cambridge University.
He now works part-time as a social worker in London while running InsideUni.
Prior to social work Tommy has worked in a variety of roles including on public sector programmes at M&C Saatchi World Services, for clients such as Girl Effect India, UNICEF, and the US State Department.
Ellie Cassidy
Chief Executive Officer
Ellie used InsideUni when she was applying to study at Oxford University.
She volunteered during her time as a student and is now InsideUni’s CEO.
Ellie brings direct experience of applying to university from a widening participation background, and experience working at all levels of what we do – whether a user, volunteer, or staff member.
Sam Collins
Programme Coordinator
Sam joined the InsideUni team in 2023 as our new Programme Coordinator.
Sam studied for his undergraduate and MSc at the University of Liverpool.
Sam loves to work with volunteers and coordinate excellent student projects, and is really excited to be starting his career as part of a growing initiative like InsideUni.
Our Story
InsideUni was co-founded by two students at Cambridge University.
They discovered that students who had received a privileged education could rely on first-hand advice and special support from their teachers, parents, and friends. Tommy and Akil wanted to find a way to share this first-hand advice about applying to university without the need to have a privileged network of knowledgeable insiders to help out.
They brought together lots of students to share their application advice, and upload it onto their self-coded website, completely for free.
InsideUni Hub was established in 2022 as a platform to empower students to create their own access projects. InsideUni Hub offers involved support, resources, and coordination to our student community, who create their own websites to share the advice they wish they’d known when they were applying to university.
In 2023, InsideUni was awarded the Fair Education Alliance Innovation Award to celebrate and help scale up our work.
The Award includes a year of incubation support and the opportunity to join a network of 250 organisations that are involved in making education fairer.
InsideUni Hub 