Looking like both kids are going to Bristol at the same time - how screwed am I?

[CottonOn]

Posting here for traffic.
Two kids, 13 months apart, both want to do aeronautical engineering, one girl starting this autumn, the second the next.

They’ll get the minimum maintenance loan. I’ve got roughly 20k set aside which I naively thought would give them a fairly pleasant 3 years. I’ve only just clocked that actually this isn’t nearly enough.

This is what the calculator is telling me

You could get a £4,767 Maintenance Loan to contribute towards your living costs.
How your Maintenance Loan is calculated:
£10,227 (the maximum Maintenance Loan available)

• £5,460 (the amount you might not be eligible for, based on your answers)

= £4,767 (the amount you could be eligible for, based on your answers)

I’m going to have to stump up £10,920 in the years where they are both there simultaneously just to get to the basic £10,227 and it ooks like accommodation is going to eat up 8k, so even that won’t be enough.

Can anyone tell me how much it’s realistically going to cost to top them up enough to live in Bristol? I’ve been so blithely naive all these years thinking I’d squirrelled enough away. Could kick myself.

I understand you're worried but as a woman who has worked in defence/aeronautics it's totally worth it! Congrats to your girls for going after their dreams! Bristol is a great city too. One point I would like to make is that many PP respond "they can get jobs" but please be careful, engineering is a huge amount of work (from experience) and it's not always possible to work and stay the course.

I got the minimum loan and it just wasn’t enough. My parents couldn’t afford to fund me and my 14 month younger sister. I dropped out after year 1 and had lost so much weight starving myself trying to afford to live at uni. My sister dropped out in 2nd year.

I was on a degree course that I couldn’t get a pt job as has to be in a lot and had one to one lessons etc that changed each week and my sister had to take a gap year abroad but the uni still charged fees while she was there(!) I’d assume aeronautical degree would allow your dd to get a job and also well worth contacting smaller airports in the summer to see if that dd could get some minimum wage work experience in. Some of the smaller companies that deal with small aircraft may allow this.

definitely consider a gap year if possible.

Agree with the above - my son is at Cambridge and spends a FRACTION of what my daughter does in Nottingham - the terms are so short and the contact hours/work load massive (he is doing engineering though) so he's really only out once a week.

There is a lot of financial help from colleges if needed.

Not read the whole thread but are their apprenticeships available via e.g. British Airways or Airbus or the RAF who will pay for the course but obviously require military service.

My DS is doing the same degree at a different Uni. No way would he have time for a job as well. It is full on. Contact hours are only a tiny part of the work expected. He knows lots of people who have had to drop out because they can’t afford to live and don’t have time to work and study. It’s the rents that are a killer, it’s a joke how much students are expected to pay.

Sorry if I've missed this being asked already but can you not afford to pay anything out of your monthly income? I wouldn't expect to save the whole amount kids would need for uni - maybe a bit saved, like you have, plus a few hundred a month (or whatever) as necessary. I don't think many people have the whole cost of uni stashed away. It will be expensive but - like nursery - it ends relatively quickly.

I went it Cambridge and agree with PP that it was so cheap for my parents only having to pay accomodation for the short terms Vs siblings at other unis who needed to rent accomodation all year round (Plus subsidised, good food). Not what you would expect! I had jobs in the holidays from which I paid for all of my clothes and going etc.

Could they apply for industry sponsorship?

My sister was sponsored by BAE (and albeit for general engineering, my husband was sponsored by a telecoms company).

As well as some funding in term time, the sponsorship requires them to work for the company in the summer A so both earning money and getting work experience.

I don’t know when the applications for these schemes open, nor how competitive they are.

I'll have 4 kids all at university at the same time if they all go - two sets of twins in two years. I'm hoping they decide to stay in London and can live at home!

This is why my kids will be staying at home for Uni. No it won’t be the same experience as moving out but it’s way more expensive now. We have a decent income but cannot afford to basically fund 2 further households and call me selfish but I want to enjoy some of my own income now instead of pissing it up the wall on rent for my kids to live the high life as students. Yes they would work but how much would they realistically be able to earn and study.

@TiredCatLady also said the same.

Im seeing a username theme here cat ladies 😀

I think you need to be honest with them here before they pick their uni choices! Let them know you've got some money aside for them, and you expect that they'll get part time jobs to help out, but they'll be getting the minimum student loan, and you'll be able to give them a couple of thousand a year, and that will be it. Of course you'll help out occasionally by doing them a food shop, but that really, the amount of money they'll be given a year will be £7k. Go through with them what this needs to cover (rent, food, bills, some spending money, SU membership fees, trips etc). Help them figure out how much they're likely to get from part time jobs. Then let them factor that into their decisions. If you've promised to just cover whatever, or assumed that student loan would in a hugely expensive city like Bristol, then you're gonna have to speak to them asap, as they may already be applying for halls you can't afford on the assumption it's not a problem!

If my parents had let me think they'd be covering my expenses at uni I may have chosen a different city, and would have been absolutely screwed when they hadn't! As it was, they were upfront about what they could give me (they promised not to let me starve, bought my course books, and paid for my deposit for my second year house), so I chose a uni in a city where student loan would actually cover the basic accommodation and knew from the off I had to get a part time job straight away.
The course isn't the be all and end all, but it's something to consider, alongside their actual standard of living, SU, student activities, and the city itself. There's always clearing if the elder has cemented her choices (you can use it for trading up or down, or just for a different uni if there's spaces), so I'd still encourage her to think about elsewhere where cost of living will be cheaper!

Martin Lewis has been campaigning on this issue for a number of years, trying to get the word out and really angry that parents aren't officially warned about it much earlier. You might find some useful info here!

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loan-parental-contribution-tool/guide/

My son is currently in Bristol at Uni, I have to pay £750 a month for a room in a shared house. Yes he works but as a 20 year old on minimum wage - it doesn't go far. We are managing, just! When our daughter went to Uni in Bristol 5 years ago her rent was £300 a month for a shared room. Prices are crazy.

Not really tho. My Oxbridge anecdata about it being cheaper is very much from MN threads, but I presume it is valid.

And elsewhere, £10k, while for sure possible for halls (if en suite and catered for example) is hardly at the lower end.

I do know that DD was in halls paying £5k, and DS2 paid £4k for a year. DD was 4 years ago and DS2 2 years ago. DD was at Leicester and accomm there is now available from about £100-120pw; ds2 at Lboro, which again, has halls for this Sept at about £120 pw.

A quick google shows me halls on offer in Sheffield and Leeds unis (picked somewhat at random) for between £4.5k and £5.5k.

There are cheaper options for sure. And as it goes in my limited experience, they are less popular (bc not ensuite) so often a realistic prospect.

Am seriously hoping both mine chose to live at home too - am told the ‘uni experience’ is somewhat overrated nowadays given the costs and the debt, and we are commutable for London and the unis in the SE so am crossing fingers (and toes) that they both apply to ‘locally’.

Sorry haven't RTFT but DD is going to uni later this year and I've also had to recalculate what I'd budgeted. Accomodation alone is around 8.5k/year....so the minimum maintenance loan goes nowhere near that. She will hopefully get a 1k bursary off her fees in year 1

OP, I live a few minutes walk from the University, my DH recently retired as a senior lecturer there and DS did his masters there, which included 2 years living in shared houses. You need to sort out decent halls for the first year, then by January, at the latest, in this first year your DDs need to find like-minded friends to club together with to rent a shared house.

PM me for suitable areas to look at as a lot of Bristol, particularly in the south, is not student-friendly and can be rough (seen the many murders by stabbing on the news?) and, contrary to what someone said, transport in Bristol is notoriously bad unless you live near one of the major arterial roads and is expensive. Driving is tricky as the Council hates drivers and has closed many routes, made nearly everywhere 20 mph and charges for a permit to park on the street outside your house in most central neighbourhoods.

The University does not encourage working more than 16 hours a week and they are not considered to be a full-time student any longer after 20 hours. If it's an intensive course, they will struggle to complete the work and have sufficient downtime if they are also working.

He can apply to both as they are different application cycles. I think degree apprenticeships will become much more prevalent as the reality of the costs of degrees keep rising.

Oxbridge students can’t work in term time but they do a lot of work raising funds from alumni to help with bursary’s and scholarships. Do have a look at what they may be able to offer in the way of support.

@Whereareallthemillionaires

Unless you are Olympic standard or own an electric bike, Bristol isn't really suited to cycling, the hills are really steep. I did the 9 miles along the river once, never again, so steep in places.

Only certain courses give time enough for term time jobs. Most STEM subjects have full timetables and short term assignments requiring to be finaoshed within the week, that makes earning during term time difficult.
don’t assume all students can work to support themselves - some areas don’t have enough casual vacancies either.

DS is in Exeter, an hour down the motorway. Rents are very similar to Bristol. They have increased on average 25% in the last year. Average rent is now £800 a month for a room in a shared house plus bills for 11 months of the year..approx £10k a year.

Lectures take up 18 hours, then seminars on top and Uni advises another 18 study on top a week. Working during the term is hard however he does have a summer job which helps. The fact is maintenance loan only covers 50% of the rent, leaving the other £5k rent a year plus living expenses of £5K a year to be paid by parents and / or summer job.

Are there good unis within commuting distance to your home?

If you think going to uni is one big piss up then I guess you don't really value uni

If students can’t work in term time they have long holidays so can work then

op, you also need to take into account that during term time you are no longer going to be feeding them . Their food costs, and probably a chunk of other costs you’re covering right now, will be diverted direct to them as part of that £10k.

The best way we found was to sit down and do an exact budget. NEEDS only. Any additional stuff they’ll need to get holiday jobs for, use charity shops etc. they can choose cheaper accommodation in 2/3rd year in grottier house shares- set expectations that no, you will NOT, pay for en-suite bathrooms when a cheaper shared shower block is available. A lot of accommodation has been upmarketted since the 2000s , and is simply ridiculous and a money making machine- students don’t NEED it even if they might want it. The budget will show where you are merely diverting money into an allowance vs what you would have spent directly.

it is tough. But you will get though it. The fact you have 2 going through nearly simultaneously means you get a higher level of pain but over with more quickly.

set very firm expectations about them getting work and becoming independent financially within months of graduation. That they most likely won’t be able to “come home” to live- they must go where work is and fend for themselves. House shares etc. We said to kids we would give them 5 months post graduation to live at home, after 6 weeks they needed to sign on and we’d take some of benefits to pay for food at home, after that they’d be “booted “ out to fend for themselves. We never had to get anywhere near that because we’d always set that expectation, and they never assumed anything else. I think if push had come to shove we’d have put any money we’d taken into savings for them, and probably been a suck it and see on point to boot them out. But both got jobs in milk round and came home for a few short weeks before starting life as a pan “adult” proper on their own 2 feet.

thenadvantage of that was, once they’d left home and we’re self supporting, we suddenly became pretty well off 🤷🏼‍♀️😉. We then saved like barmy to replace the savings we’d used for university and into our pensions. So, it sort of all worked out ok. Seriously, once the kids leave home for good you realise how much spare money you suddenly have 🤦‍♀️🤣🤣🤣

Just curious, as Bristol offers can be made quite late.... At what point does the applicant put in preference for Halls of Residence? Is it when they firm offer or only on A-levels results?

I am wondering if those who don't get an offer until late are at a disadvantage accommodation-wise.

Hope it all works out Op and your daughters have an amazing experience.