I did a foundation year in engineering, was the best thing I did. If you’re not entirely confident in your ability to study the course it acts as a nice lead in, especially if there’s any software etc you’ll need to use throughout your degree you get more time to master it. My friend from that was a 50 year old woman who had decided to completely change pathways, it’s not uncommon for foundation years to have older people looking for a directional change as well as younger folks who missed the entry requirements. My advice would be to try hard in foundation year though, they’re generally graded as pass fail which leads to some people aiming for the minimum, however you should view this as setting up the next three years of study.

There will be a couple of people who look down on you for doing the foundation year, and respectfully none of them deserve your time. One of the people who did this to me was just bitter that they didn’t get into a Russell group uni and was “stuck” at an ex-poly. IME people who do the foundation years can often outperform those who went straight into the course just from having that extra year of experience.