Living at home for a masters

[misele]

DS has signed up to do a masters programme in London next year, it's an 8 month course. He needs to be at the university for 2-3 days a week.

He had originally planned to move up there and rent a room somewhere. But after doing some number crunching he's started to realise just how expensive london is. He could do it, but money would be very very tight.

He's thinking about living at home and commuting in for those days. I know he will miss out, but I'm not sure how social short masters programmes are in London anyway.

We live a 10 minute walk from the station, then a 50 minute train journey into London, and then his uni would be another 20 minutes or so on the tube. If he books this ahead/in good time, it can be about £15 return.

He's figured if he does this, then he can save a good few thousand pounds to either keep in the bank or to go travelling with before he starts work.

A word of warning. Some Masters degrees are so full on a part time job is difficult, if not impossible.

If it is just a year, you will want to get the best result, and you may also be applying for jobs or research positions. Most will be better off treating the Masters as a full time job, living at home to save money and, say re listening to lectures on the train home, and not work. DS had half his exams in January and half in June, plus others at the end of the summer school the previous September.

He and his cohort were regularly offered well paid teaching assistant work by the University, but few if any could find the time.

@Needmoresleep

A word of warning. Some Masters degrees are so full on a part time job is difficult, if not impossible.

If it is just a year, you will want to get the best result, and you may also be applying for jobs or research positions. Most will be better off treating the Masters as a full time job, living at home to save money and, say re listening to lectures on the train home, and not work. DS had half his exams in January and half in June, plus others at the end of the summer school the previous September.

He and his cohort were regularly offered well paid teaching assistant work by the University, but few if any could find the time.

Completely agree. DD2 did a Masters last year and had planned to work a couple of evenings and on Saturdays but quickly found that she needed to study every evening and most of the weekend – she was in labs most weekdays so her evenings and weekends were spent doing all the supplementary reading of papers, re-listening to lectures, coding her results etc.

Students who think a Masters is just an extension of their under-grad years might be in for quite a shock, it was a completely different animal, exponentially more difficult and demanding. DD2 worked hard because she really wanted (and got) a distinction.

This was a highly academic taught STEM MSc at a school ranked ahead of everywhere except Oxford for that particular subject, so possibly not all Masters are as tough but it definitely needed to be treated as a full-time occupation.

My eldest did hers part time over 2 years precisely so she could work as well.

I don't think there is much time for a "social life" if ploughing through it in a year just lots of very hard graft.

Good point @RandomMess, this is another option, particularly if the student is in a position where they have to earn some money too.

Quite a lot of students on DD2's Masters course were qualified doctors looking to add an extra specialism to their knowledge and they continued to work part-time and did the course over 2 years.