What to Expect from Student Finance

If you’re going to university in September, then you should have already applied for Student Finance and most likely know what you’re entitled to over the next few years. But what exactly should you expect?

(This applies to English student finance and, of course, could be different in other countries)

When you get paid:

Your loan comes in three parts. The first part will be paid within the first few weeks of starting university. Nothing gets paid until your enrolment on your course, when the university confirms to student finance that you are at university. It can take a couple of weeks, but the first instalment of the loan and grant comes through then.

The second instalment comes at the beginning of January, the beginning of the second term at university, so long as your still on your course, of course, and the third instalment comes at the beginning of April.

Loan vs grant:

Your maintenance loan and your maintenance grant come through at the same time. The amount of grant and loan depend on how much your house hold earns and, really, the only difference between the two is that the maintenance loan will be added to the overall loan you will have to pay back (someday, providing you earn over a certain amount), but the maintenance grant will never have to be paid back (unless you drop out of your course, but that’s another matter).

How do I pay the university?

You don’t.

Well, if you’re getting student finance to pay your tuition fees, you don’t. If you’re not, then you need to seek out advice from you university.

If student finance is paying your tuition fees, the money does not go into your bank. Not for a second. Student finance pay it straight to your university. You don’t need to worry about it at all.

Is it enough to live on?

This depends on how much you receive, and whether you will get any grants or bursaries from your university. For me, if was plenty enough to live on but a flat mate of mine didn’t even get enough to cover his accommodation (and we were in the cheapest halls of residence the university offered).

Dropping Out Experience

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.

Budget Living

The stereotypical student is always skint, living on beans on toast and the cheapest of drinks. That kind of lifestyle is definitely true of some students, but it doesn’t have to be the case. I finished each term with more than a few pounds left over from my loan.

Halls: Halls is what the majority of my loan was spent on, and I was in the cheapest halls. It’s worth looking around at all of the halls options, because most expensive doesn’t always mean best. And cheapest does not mean bad.

Going out: Don’t. No, it is possible to go out, have a good time, and still stay out of your over draft. It’s about being able to limit your spending, though. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TAKE YOUR BANK CARD OUT ON A NIGHT OUT. Know how much you can spend on a night out and do not spend anymore.

It’s the case with most spending that you’re going to need to budget. Per week or per month, you need to know how much you can spend, and have the self-control to keep to that.

Food: It is unrealistic to assume you’re going to be able to eat from the take out every day of the week. Besides the fact that it’s extremely unhealthy, it’s expensive (although, if you have the budget for it, there’s nothing stopping you). Often, it’s cheaper to cook in “batches” than cooking individual meals. It’s easy to cool a giant pot of spaghetti bolognaise and to freeze what isn’t eaten for another day.

Shop around: sometimes things are cheaper at other shops and, if you’re serious about saving as much money as possible, it’s worth spending an hour or so to check out other shops. Include in that discount shops such as (in the UK) Poundland (and all variations) and Savers (especially if you’re a fan of brand name food stuffs).

It may also be worth looking into having a separate account from your current account. Having a savings account to move a portion of my money into helped me budget. With only what was budgeted for the month at hand and everything else put somewhere out of reach, it was a little less tempting to overspend.

Budgeting isn’t hard. It’s working out how much you can spend each week without going into your over draft. Budgeting isn’t the hard part, or living on the limited amount of money, but having the self-control to not over spend is a little more difficult.

Some Things They Don’t Tell Freshers (Or They Do But They Don’t Listen)

Fresher’s flu is real. Not only is it real, but it is annoying. I suffered from fresher’s flu for a whole half a day. This is mainly because I don’t drink. Judging by the amount of coughing in lectures, the Fresher’s flu stuck around campus for nearly a months. Let’s be realistic, there are different germs all over the country, most of which your body has never seen before. Mix alcohol with that (or don’t, in my case) and you’re probably going to see an effect. Get some soothers and some pain killers (though the latter may be for hangovers rather than colds) and get over it.

Your student loan (at least in the UK) won’t come through until your university had told student finance that you are attending the university. This happened for me when I got my student ID card (not when I turned up on the first day or when I enrolled online). It then did not come through for another week. You are going to have to live for this time. Food. Bring some, but bring a little money too (some that isn’t for partying), because having to eat dry pasta and Lettice sandwiches because you have no money and you’ve already used up most of your food isn’t very fun.

When you have online tutorials, it is probably a good idea to look at them. Not look at them whilst you’re cooking beans on toast. Or look at them whilst you’re rushing to get ready. But really actually watch the tutorials and make sure you understand what’s going on. It’s probably important.

You need to sign on with the doctor if you go to a university away from home. You may never get ill, but there’s a chance. And you do not want to waste your time back at home waiting in a doctor’s waiting room to speak to them if something is serious. Ok, the queue to sign on during freshers may be huge, but it will be worth it. And you may have pee in a tube, but you’re a grown up now.

It’s ok to miss home. A lot of people get home sick when they move away. A lot of the time you leave your friends behind and it is ok to be down about this. It’s also ok to not miss home. A lot of people don’t. University is a different experience for everyone, and don’t judge yourself against other people’s experience.