A 22-year-old student is set to begin his PHD after the summer just a matter of years after he failed his exams in school to leave him with no idea of what he was going to do next.

Robert Davis will leave the University of Dundee after he graduates with a masters degree in applied neuroscience before heading off to start his doctorate.

It’s a far cry from how he finished his secondary school life when Robert failed to get any grades in sixth year and was well below his expected in fifth year.

Universities then rejected his applications to study science and he was left with no idea what to do. A former junior rower for Scotland, he admits that his focus on that took his eye off the ball around his academic work but he was offered an opportunity to change things by the University of Dundee.

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He was initially offered a place as an associate student which meant most of his first year was spent at Dundee and Angus college doing a HNC in applied sciences and that would offer him a route into second year at the university if he passed it.

During his first year, he also studied one day a week at the university to undertake two modules as well as scheduled lab time that he might not have been able to if he wasn’t part of the associate programme.

He said: “I probably should have been a bit more focused on trying to do well in my exams, instead of just aiming to pass them.

“I’d never not passed them before so I didn’t even think about that, but when I got my results through showing I’d failed all my sixth year exams, I realised something wasn’t right about the way I was balancing my time.

“I took a while to think about whether I wanted to do university through the college route.

“I thought there might be a stigma around it, that other students would see me differently or that employers might not look too favourably on it.

“It was a high school way of thinking and as soon as I started university I realised how wrong that perception was. I didn’t feel any different to other university students.”

His impressive time at Dundee has now led to him heading to Wales to continue his studies where he will complete a PhD and look to achieve his ambitions in becoming a medical researcher into degenerative brain diseases.

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He doesn’t believe he would have been anywhere near that, though, if it hadn’t been for the opportunities offered to him to go through an alternative route in Dundee.

The university ringfences up to 50 additional funded places a year for associate students and has had 201 go via that route over the past five years into life sciences, humanities and environmental science.

He added: “I don’t think I would have done a Masters if it wasn’t for the alternative route. The experience was so positive and supportive that it made me want to stay on past my undergraduate course and move into research.”

Professor Nick Brewer leads the associate programme and feels it is a huge benefit to students who are unsure about university as much as anything else.

This gives them the chance to experience lab classes that can often have upwards of 100 people in them at a time and helps them figure out if it is something they want to continue in the long run.

The professor said: “A lot of our associate students come from challenging backgrounds or situations and feel like university isn’t for them.

“It can be quite intimidating coming to university – classes can be with hundreds of people, even our lab classes can take around 110 students per lab. Some people thrive in that environment but others find it daunting.

“Through this programme students can sample university and work out if it’s for them. It might not be, and that’s ok, but some really grab the opportunity and that’s what it’s all about – giving them that chance.”