AIBU for pressuring my son to apply to unis close to home?

Wow. I think moving away from home is one of the most important bits. If our kids had wanted to stay local, we’d have been encouraging them to do the opposite.

I went to Exeter which was bloody miles away from my home. It was fantastic.

Your son is absolutely right and it sounds like your holding him back to be honest. This is about him, not you. Uni accommodation is absolutely part of uni life and a way to make lifelong friends, you learn important life skills and have an absolute blast. Why wouldn't you want that for him? If cost is an issue then maybe he can get a part-time job and there are grants available.

Oxbridge don’t let you commute you have to live in halls so no idea why you are pushing commuting!!!!!
There accommodation is cheaper than most as it’s normally only 24 weeks a year, loads of bursaries available but neither are easy to get into, they are looking for perfect for students.

Cambridge is widely regarded as the very best for engineering. It’s closely affiliated to many of the cutting edge companies on the science park. Anyone wanting a career in that industry would be mad not to go there if they had the opportunity.

💯 outrageously unreasonable. If you pressure him and it’s the wrong fit he will blame you.

You would be EXTREMELY unreasonable to pressure your DS in any way with regard to which university he goes to. A full university life is not conducive to living at home and he ought to be encouraged to spread his wings.

You could let him know how much you would be able to fund him while he is at university and let him do the sums as to where he could afford to go. He would need to know that anyway before deciding. Make sure he has all the information he needs, including the cost of travelling home for the holidays, or whatever they call them, if that is what he chooses to do. He may not.

You can’t graduate unless you have lived there for the full nine terms. So that is that. Having said that, I gather that living costs are relatively low at O and C owing to the provision of accommodation made possible by the extreme wealth of the Colleges. If you are very concerned about costs, avoid Durham which is horrendous for student accommodation.

For us. Dc just tubed to uni. So for us if was fine. I believe OP's DS has a longer journey awaiting him

London is a bad idea if he wants to save money unless you live in London (not possible to get trains home out of London much after 11pm).

As other have said - full time Oxford undergraduates have to live within six miles of Carfax tower - at the bottom end of Cornmarket Street, during term time. Even postgraduate students have to live with 25 miles of it.

I went to Oxford. My back up choice was Reading which was commutable from where I then lived - that's now 25 or so years ago.

Don't pressure. Do talk through the finances. Oxford has some bursary funds in addition to standard student finance. He needs to look at the financial situation with the other unis.

Oxford doesn't allow students to work during term time (some occasional rare exceptions for the odd couple of hours but nothing like a standard part time student job). But has longer vacations.

If Cambridge offers the better course and he's been to open days at both Oxford and Cambridge then he may as well go for the course he really wants to do (understanding it'll be more difficult for you to come over for lunch / to watch a play etc).

Saying that I picked Oxford over Cambridge for being about an hour away from home. I only went home in term time overnight once in the three years.

Having a back up option with a lower UCAS tariff that's commutable from home is a good contingency plan at this stage (don't know the dates nowadays for when you have to accept offers). It's a different uni experience but has particular advantages if A levels don't go to plan eg. keeping any Saturday job while studying / less debt / local knowledge re finding other part time jobs.

Warwick was a really good place when I looked at it 25 years ago. I'd pick it over London.

For other keeping costs down strategies I'd look north for cheaper accommodation.

For commuting to uni, think about public transport/ car parking facilities/ taxis and also look at things like youth hostels / Travelodges etc - he will need either a way to get home late at night sometimes and for that to be ok with everyone else in the house and / or sufficient funds he can stay over somewhere local to uni after nights out. Obviously he can't drive drunk. An hour's commute each way is probably too much especially for subjects with lots of contact hours. Are there any suitable unis within about 30 mins commuting time?

If he's going to live with you and commute to uni there will probably have to be a lot of adjustments to how you interact day to day - you're not going to know where he is / what he's doing / when he might be back beyond whether or not you're cooking for him. He may want to bring casual partners home.

If he's motivated to study and actively wants to save money by living at home you'll be able to make it work. Otherwise providing the finances can be made to work he's going to be better going and living at uni.

Just let him choose and support his choice with enthusiasm

It's up to him and he wants to move out. This is positive sbd oerfectky normal. My eldest went to uni in central Londin. We live in the suburbs, so not very far from Londin. She could have commuted, but she really wanted the full uni experience. It was costly abd she got a job in bar to supplement her invite, as well as receiving help from me and a family friend. Niw my youngest is doing something g similar. I would have them stay at home by choice, i an dreading the day my youngest starts uni, but this is not about me, it's about them. Our job is to let them go and manage our emotions as best we can. By the time they start I i whilst to us they are still children and they may well be vulnerable to a degree, in the eyes if the law they are adults and they have the same rights as you with regards where they live. If you are quibbling shoot the finances, well how do you think evetine feels? It's a worry fir all. It's simply selfish and unfair of you to hold him back in this way. Be brave and let him go. It's his life. I'm sure he will come back to you, but you are reply unfair in what you are asking if him.

My understanding is that unless you literally lived in Oxford or Cambridge town (and probably not even then) your student would have to live in, as they are both college based unis. I’ve just dropped my daughter off to start at Cambridge and we live closer than you do to Oxford and there was never any suggestion that she might “commute” there.

This is good advice OP.

You can’t live on the full loan alone. It’ll only just cover rent in lots of places.

Also do most students move out for uni or do they stay at home?

@SassyBear2 You can see the specific on this - both overall and by institution, plus undergrad, postgrad etc filters - at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-57 .

If your income is very low then she will get the full loan (which doesn’t mean her repayments will be larger), AND she might qualify for bursaries and scholarships from the University
But I would advise anyone going to University either to have a real passion for the subject or have a clear career goal at the end.

YABU to pressure him. It has to be his decision.

But you can support him to make an informed decision, where he weighs up the tradeoffs. He needs to look at the full costs of living over every year of the course. Including rent, energy, food, laundry, Wi-Fi, clothes/shoes, transport, books, cost of hobbies/sports, socialising.

Bear in mind average rent for a room in a shared house/flat is London is just short of £1k a month, exclusive of bills. In Oxford, just over £800pcm.

Once he knows how much he’ll realistically need pcm, he then needs to weigh this against his loan, any likely part-time earnings or savings from working holidays and what you can offer.

Then, he’ll need to factor in time. For day-to-day chores like cooking and laundry, as well as studying, working, hobbies/socialising, travel. Long commutes can be costly in both money and time, as well as restrictive, e.g. staying late in library or socialising.

My DC lives at home, as can’t afford to rent separately and even then has to be careful with money, even with p/t work. The eldest tried it and ended up in debt.

How much parent/s can help depends on family circumstances, wealth, income and housing costs. If parents own their home mortgage-free, it’s a big difference to those renting. Retired parents or those on low incomes can’t always be tenancy guarantors.

Exactly. One of my DC only afforded it as he took a shared room. So no need to top up. Other DC needed us to fund a few £k for one year. It's a lot of money.

Yeah there is that too.

Literally you have to…

Of course AIBU!!!

It is his choice 😒
however and that is the biggy…you are in no obligation to fund it so he does need to :
-choose and fund all by himself or choose with you and take your help.

what he doesn’t get is choosing a life he can’t fund…like the rest of us.

So do your budget and give it to him. Then it is entirely his choice.

You can’t commute like that at Oxford. You have to live within a certain distance of Carfax tower.

That’s very sad. Look at the degree apprenticeship route as they cover a broad range of roles and all training is paid for. It’s very competitive, especially as younger candidates are often up against older ones but so worth it.

All this is why I worry DD won’t get the chance to go to University. My income has plummeted since health issues reduced my ability to work, and I can’t really save anything as my budget is so tight. Her father (my ex) does help pay for music lessons etc, but that money wouldn’t go far at Uni. She would have to get massively in debt to get a degree, and I’m just not sure it’s worth it any more unless it’s for a course that leads to an extremely well paying career. Essentially, unless she was doing extremely well academically, and studying something like law or finance (or whatever else seems likely to lead to high paid employment in ten years), I’d be advising her to find a different route, which I find really sad.

Yes YABU. What uni your son goes to, especially with a vocational qualification like engineering will affect his future career opportunities. Plus uni is the perfect time for a young person to spread their wings and gain a bit of independence. He may not want to live at home again or even come home regularly. Rent and living costs is what his maintenance loan is for assuming he gets one as you state you are not hugely wealthy. Some people I knew deliberately chose a uni as far away from home as they could and clinging to him now is more likely to push him further away later. Let him choose a uni on their credentials for his chosen course not your desire to keep him.

Terms at Oxford and Cambridge are 8 weeks long. They are intense and commuting would make it extremely challenging academically and absolutely disastrous socially for your son. I grew up 45mins away from one of them and living at home never entered my head. I'm not even sure it's permitted - having a job certainly isn't. When I was there, it was widely accepted that engineering was bastard hard and had a comparatively high drop out rate - don't make it even harder.