Oxford and Cambridge current students

[sandybayley]

Nearly filled up the old one...

ah right (haven't seen the paper one myself). If she signs in with the new requested code she should be asked all the relevant questions from there.

OK, now I'm feeling a bit annoyed.

DS's college has just retweeted an announcement from the college hospitality team that they've received the necessary approval stamp / met industry standards from the tourist board to reopen for B&B / conferences as soon as restrictions allow.

That is really really annoying IronOaks How could they be so tone deaf?

They could have at least waited until their students have been told whether or not they'll be allowed to return before October.

That is really insensitive @Ironoaks - someone should remind the college that their raison d'etre is as to be an academic institution

Hi everyone

Soon to be mum of Oxford student yay! Well if he gets the grades....

Can I ask about money...? I was looking on the Oxford website and it gives a range of annual living cost of between £10,575 and £15,390.
This is quite a range and quite a bit more than the maintenance loan. My son will only be eligible for the minimum maintenance loan, so we will have to top up the extra.

Can I ask what others do for this? Do you find that they need the upper end of the range? Do you give them a lump sum at the beginning of term or pay monthly? I am totally clueless about how this all works so any practical guidance/tips would be great!

Thank you

If it's anything like Cambridge's cost of living, they can live on a lot less. We top up dds loan so it matches those who get the max loan and she saves some of it. We pay that in termly.

We pay accommodation costs (not food) and he lives off the rest of his loan. This seems to be plenty.

Congrats on the offer!

Congratulations on the offer! There are also Oxford University bursaries and travel allowances www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-funding/oxford-support Colleges may also have their own. My D has not spent very much at all so far - of course there wasn't much to spend it on in Michaelmas, and even less this term as she's been at home. Bear in mind that living out for a year can be very expensive, rents are high and tenancies longer than the 27 weeks they pay to college.

I would say pay termly - loans and accommodation charges are paid/charged termly. I also pay D1's phone, and we have a family sub to Netflix and Spotify (this is her favourite thing haha)

Thanks everyone- sounds like in his first year he won't be needing much more than me topping him up to the maximum maintenance loan or paying his rent. He has been saying that he has read that Oxford is really expensive, but I think he's probably just got no idea so is worrying about it. I think it was that quote from the Oxford website about the upper range being over £15k that alarmed him.

We pay accommodation (C) + £100 per week during term time for food. She also gets the minimum maintenance loan. I also post a lot of goodies every month (only because I haven't got over the novelty of writing the address on the parcel).

I think that's quite generous, but she will have to study a lot in holidays and the term time workload is huge, so she cannot get a PT job (and term-time work is discouraged by the university). This leaves money for festivals and holidays.

@CinnamonJellyBeans

We pay accommodation (C) + £100 per week during term time for food. She also gets the minimum maintenance loan. I also post a lot of goodies every month (only because I haven't got over the novelty of writing the address on the parcel).

I think that's quite generous, but she will have to study a lot in holidays and the term time workload is huge, so she cannot get a PT job (and term-time work is discouraged by the university). This leaves money for festivals and holidays.

Thanks - that's really helpful- hadn't really thought about part time jobs or having enough money to do things in holidays. Do you give her all the money at the beginning of each term?

DS only gets the minimum maintenance loan, so we top him up with £5000 per year, which I’ve just divided by 12 and pay by standing order, to encourage him to plan his finances round the year, both term time and vacations. Obviously, vacations are cheaper for him as Hotel Mum & Dad don’t charge for rent and food, although if he wants to travel he’ll have to fund that.

The flipside is I reckon in term time, we are saving around £150 per month on food bills with one less mouth to feed...

We (bank of dad) pay her at the beginning of each term. Once that's paid, there are very few extras. She can borrow all the books she needs from the library. There's not enough time to go out drinking very often (even when they can).

She's booked some festivals and is about to book a group holiday for her college friendship group, so that's probably her biggest expense.

Congratulations to your not so lazy boy @lazyboysmum!

We pay DS's battels (posh Oxford word for accommodation and food bill!) every term. It worked out about £1500 a term for the first couple of years.

He then uses his minimum loan for everything else. It's plenty because his friendship group aren't massive drinkers and college stuff is subsidised.

The colleges also seem to throw money at them too. At DS's college they can claim back up to £100 spent on books and he's had the odd £200 or £300 for doing well in some exams. It's a strange world!

Check out the "Battels" section under finance for your prospective college. Costs do vary a lot. We pay DD's accommodation costs. Now she's staying on for 5 extra weeks over Easter & will have a 39 week lease for next year, so those costs will be about 50% higher.

"Battels"! I knew there was a whole new language eg sets but hadn't heard of that one. I quite like the idea of paying the food bill- in my son's college it's pay as you go and he's not the best at waking up/remembering mealtimes etc and seems to think a diet of Doritos and ice-cream is sufficient. So that is a really good idea.
Thanks for everyone's replies, really helpful

Congrats @lazyboysmum, he clearly isn't that lazy!
DS has not taken a maintenance loan, we pay his battels and he gets £300 per month for the months he is in college (so works out about 8 months of the year in all). He managed fine on this, he self caters and spends about £25 per week on food, £12 per month on a gym membership. To be fair there have not been many socialising opportunities so we'll see what happens next term!

We pay DD's accommodation and she uses her loan for the rest. Her food isn't included in battels, so she pays for that - it is subsidised in college, but in her view inedible except the cooked breakfast. She lives on that as her main meal - not overly healthy.

As whiterose said there are some random cash payments. DD does Art and she automatically gets a grant for materials, which this year is topped up because the higher cost of buying them through retail outlets. She has also benefitted from the COVID hardship fund - I am perplexed by this b/c she has worked at home and her college aren't charging rent for students who stayed at home.

She has been given the details of her college children already - she isn't allowed to contact them, but has been checking them out on SM. She is more worried about results day for them than her own.

Goodness, unescorted, your DD is a mother-to-be already! It seems like only yesterday that they were waiting for contact from their own parents. Sounds like her college is unusually well organised.

I expect this will be a useful thread for other prospective Oxbridge parents, although you might need a spreadsheet to translate between annual amounts, termly amounts, accommodation plus spending etc.

.. and a spreadsheet is exactly what we used last summer. We too were surprised by the cost of living estimates published by the college and we settled somewhere between the min and max (probably the average of the costs that you quoted @lazyboysmum). We pay our contribution termly and DS combines that with a loan and he pays college from that. It works out that he has £180 per week on top of accommodation and college meals, although that has to last for holidays too. DS's Michelmas term was pretty sociable with an early, sports-related start and lots of 'aocially-distanced' evenings out before restaurants closed. I think he spent everything, but I'm sure he would have managed just fine on less. Food was quite a large expenditure for him (despite being at a college with excellent food and serving staff who regularly give him two portions). However, now that he has discovered Najar's (inexpensive and fantastic Lebanese food stall in St Giles) he feels he has little need for restaurants!

Bottom line, Oxford is not an expensive place per se and if you need to stick to the bottom end of that range I expect notsolazyboy would be OK.

@lazyboysmum

Once his A levels are done, you need to train him up on achievable healthy eating and if he is not athletic, the need for daily exercise.

The condensed terms create a massive workload, for even the most conscientious of students. Do not underestimate the mental stress and strain. He needs to get used to preparing or choosing healthy food, or he will compromise his body's ability to deal with stress and freshers flu.

You should also consider his alcohol tolerance. My kids have been trained to drink safely from their early teens (despite having a very low household consumption).Does he know how many bottles of beer provide a pleasant effect and when he should stop? For many children, free access to alcohol for the first time occurs in freshers week. Puke in the corridors, bathrooms and missed days due to hangovers. Also regretted drunken interactions.

I honestly don't think there is a massive drugs culture (but I could be wrong). If your son has not been exposed to drug availability, he needs to think about how he will respond when these situations arise. TBH, you don;t need to get stressed about this, but if he's clear in his head beforehand, he won't make any rash decisions.

I must live in a parallel universe. We give DD at C £50 per month. She gets one step down from the maximum maintenance loan and also a bursary due to our family income. She seems to manage pretty well on that. She eats a vegan diet at uni and caters for herself most meals. She gets 1 free formal per week for being in a college choir and her college does a great brunch on a Sunday, so that's her weekly indulgence.

Her accommodation in her 1st year and 4th year is/was ensuite and therefore more expensive. In her 2nd year she had a lovely room overlooking the court & chapel and in her 3rd year was in a college house with a fully equipped kitchen including a freezer, so she upped her cooking skills.

To @lazyboysmum, I'm no expert on Oxford, but DD was advised to get a bike for C. She already had a lovely bike but we went to the recycling centre and spent £8 on a shocking pink one. DH put new tyres & brakes on it and my dad bought her a really good lock. If it gets nicked she'll be sad but it owes us nothing. She takes her lights & helmet from home & brings them back each vacation.

Wow @Ironoaks, talk about not reading the room! No doubt the conference income will offset the drop in alumni donations for this cohort; cant imagine they are generating the espirit de corps that fosters the desire to be generous late in life...
Well done to your DC @lazyboysmum.. we also get the minimum for our 3 DC.. Havent found the need to top up to anymore than the standard maintenance loan.

I think we all have very different approaches to our kids and getting them ready for uni, dd knew what a healthy meal looks like, but given the crap I ate as a student I was in no position to do more than suggest that she tried to do better than I did.