University can be a stressful time. Moving away from home, becoming independent, starting courses you may not have experienced before. For some people, university is right. Others find that either their chosen university, their chosen course, or university life in general isn’t for them, and decide to quit.
I chose to drop out of my course at the end of February, and found very little information on doing so, so here’s my experience.
Firstly, make sure what you’re doing is the right thing. Talk to your tutor about your options, what you plan on doing next year, and if the university can do anything to help. If you find that you’re struggling to settle at university, there may be resources from your student union to help you. If you’re struggling on the course, the department may have routes you can take instead of dropping out. Dropping out is often final, and you don’t want to be changing your mind two weeks later and realising you made the wrong decision. I’d been talking to my tutor about dropping out since the Christmas break, and we’d gone through my options.
Make sure you know what you’re doing next year. If you’re applying for another university, remember to get your application in before the deadline (some point in January). If you’re not, be prepared with job applications or other training opportunities. Research as much as you did when applying to university. You don’t want to be stuck somewhere even worse.
Student Finance
Student finance is a mystical organisation in which even the student advice centre at my university didn’t know much about. Experiences change from case to case.
Most importantly, if you’re applying for a different university or course for September, remember the student finance (in England at least) will only give you a loan for the duration of your course plus one year. For example, I’m starting a three year course in September, so student finance will only give (lend) me four years’ worth of money. This will include my current year (the one I’ve dropped out of). Because I was only in first year when I dropped out, it shouldn’t be much of an issue for me. It will mean I won’t be able to take a resit year if I need to (or I’ll have to fund it myself in some other way), but that’s it. If I was in second year when I dropped out, however, I would still only get the four years of finance, the two years at my first university and then only two years at my second, and I would have to fund the third year myself. You shouldn’t stay on a course you hate just because of money, but it’s worth bearing in mind.
Alright, paying back your student loan. This is what varies from case to case. I quit midway through the second instalment of my loan. Student finance (supposedly) calculated what portion of my loan (and grant) I wouldn’t have spent (working on a day by day bases and assuming I didn’t spend more at one point in a month than another) and then the amount they calculated needed to be paid back immediately. It is possible to set up a payment plan if you don’t have the money to hand, for whatever reason, but I was able to pay mine off all at once. I won’t receive the third instalment of my loan, so that’s nothing to worry about.
The amount of loan that has covered when I was at university (the amount I didn’t have to immediately pay back) will go onto my student debt which I’ll start paying back after I start earning over £21,000 and is nothing to worry about. The grant that helped cover the cost of being at university will not have to be paid back.
If you get a grant from your university, check with the student advice centre there to see if you will have to pay that back. I didn’t, but I’ve no experience at other universities and you have to check.
The process of dropping out varies from university to university, but it always starts with talking to your tutor. It’s recommended you talk to the advice centre (which will really help, even if you don’t think it will). For me, I had to fill in a form, get my tutor to sign it, and then hand it in. That was that.
Check with your accommodation what their stance is. I was given a week after it was registered that I quit to get out of my halls of residence. Check with them if you will get any money back if you pay in advance too. It might help pay back anything you have to immediately pay back to student finance.
I hope this helps anybody thinking of quitting. If you are, remember that this doesn’t make you a failure. It’s simply a change of direction, and is nothing to be ashamed of.
The Ghoul Student 