Work as much as you can on your self esteem. Get professional help on this if you can. Read all the self help books on it that you can.
Your self esteem will naturally go up as you achieve things in life.
Getting to uni is an acheivement that you should be proud of, for starters. Well done and well deserved.
Sort out your self esteem and I'm confident that a feeling of happiness or contentment will descend upon you.
Then you should have the mindset that you are happy as a single person. And happy when you are in a relationship.
Your self esteem really is far more important to your happiness than whether you have a boyfriend or not.
Put most of your effort into what will make you happiest in life. Having sorted that out, you can then look into other things, like getting a boyfriend, if that hasn't already sorted itself out already.
BTW, for your first boyfriend, try to get one that will help build up your self esteem. There's a relatively high proportion of men that will drag your self esteem down. If you find yourself in a relationship with one, dump his negative backside before he does any damage. What you're looking for is a man that is happy enough with himself and happy enough and tolerant of the people around him. An "I'm OK, You're OK kind of guy."