The personal tutor plays a key role in the student experience at university, and personal tutoring embodies the student relationship with the university, suggesting that it has the potential to provide insights beyond that specific relationship to the institution and higher education context. A focus session with first year undergraduate students explored expectations and experiences of personal tutoring from the student perspective. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore students' lived experiences, and identified superordinate themes of expectations, experiences and relationships, with cluster themes including independence and authenticity. Developing a positive and genuine relationship with the personal tutor was found to 'buffer' against some of the first year challenges and contribute towards a sense of belonging. Importantly, this study provides evidence that experiencing poor personal tutoring is worse than not having a personal tutor at all, as this can lead to students experiencing strong negative emotions and re-evaluating their decision to go to university. Implications of these findings in the current higher education context of fee-paying students and competing institutional demands are discussed.