STUDENTS are resorting to breast surgery before starting university because they fear they will otherwise lack the confidence to meet new friends and succeed in their studies.

They are also turning to plastic surgery to plump up their cheeks, enhance their lips and reshape their nose.

Surgeons are reporting a booming demand from female students for the breast enlargement procedure, which costs about £3,000 — coincidentally the price of top-up fees from the start of the 2006 academic year.

Some surgeons report that several students a week are turning to them in a drastic attempt to boost their self-esteem. They say that students, traditionally indifferent to personal grooming, are now becoming obsessed with their appearance.

There are concerns that some surgeons may be trading on the insecurities of young students who should be left free to develop their sense of identity without commercial pressures.

Professor Kefah Mokbel, a consultant breast surgeon at the Princess Grace private hospital in London, has been so concerned by the trend that he is now carrying out a study of 600 female university students to find out the percentage of undergraduates who have gone under the knife.

Mokbel, who is also a breast surgeon at St George’s hospital in London and professor at the Brunel Institute of Cancer Genetics, said: “We have observed a lot of female students coming for consultations, particularly from the first year at university.

“Some of these women see university as the starting point of their career. Looks are now much more important in society and they see this as helping them achieve more in their education and careers. These young women see a good body image being linked to success.”

Mokbel fears that while cosmetic surgery may be helpful in some cases, it can cause profound damage to others. “When a young person is vulnerable, surgeons should be very careful and identify whether this young woman is having surgery for the right reasons.”

He cites as an example the television series Nip/Tuck, in which Joely Richardson plays a plastic surgeon’s wife. She decides to have breast implants to make her husband pay greater attention to her.

Apostolos Gaitanis, who practises in Harley Street, believes the reason for the rise in cosmetic surgery among freshers is that it enables them to reinvent themselves.

“University marks a change in their life and they want to make a new start. They want to improve their looks in order to feel more confident,” he said.

Freshers are also paying for a range of other procedures to enhance their looks. At Glancey Medical Aesthetics in Essex, Dr Lucy Glancey, the medical director, has two to three students a week requesting fuller lips.

One of her clients, Vickie Potter, 23, from Ipswich, has just had lip augmentation in preparation for life as a psychology undergraduate at York University. “I was always concerned looking at photographs that my lips were too thin,” said Potter. “I wanted to make the most of myself before I meet new people. They are not going to know what I looked like before.”

Jas Deep, who will be 18 next month, has just had her nose reshaped by Gaitanis ahead of going to Stourbridge College in the West Midlands to study drama and possibly law.

Deep said she was bullied at school because of her long nose and felt self-conscious. “I think looks do determine the group of friends people end up with. I didn’t want other students to say, ‘She is not very pretty, I don’t want to be her friend’.”

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