Oxford / Cambridge - current students support / chat thread 2022

[DadDadDad]

Continuing a thread for anyone who wants to talk about their sons' and daughters' experience being a student in Oxford or Cambridge. (Or nephews, granddaughters, sisters, uncles - or if you or they have now graduated but you want to share your thoughts - all are welcome!)

Some of us on this thread go back to I think to late 2019 when our DCs were going through the admission process. A lot's happened since!

Over to you...

That's really helpful, thank you.

She paid her accommodation out of that. Like GreatAunt, we paid it termly.

We have always paid DD's accommodation & she has the minimum maintenance loan and a few extras for everything else. Open days can generate an extra £80 a few times a year.

Like others, we pay for accommodation, minimum loan does everything else. Dd sold her room back over one of the short holidays and got a rent rebate, and had a travel grant that has paid some of what was needed for her to go away thus summer. If she wants more, she has to get a holiday job. She is - like her elder brother - frugal and a charity shop dresser, though.

Same here. Topped dd up to the maximum amount split into three chunks and then she paid for accommodation out of that.

Thank you all so much. That was what I was thinking - ie we pay the accommodation and make up the difference between the full amount, minus accommodation and the £4ish k, but DH wanted to add 100 quid a week on top which seemed quite a lot....

All the little extras which hit our DD's battels account add up, but get swallowed up within our promise to pay her bills. She has to live out this year in a private house and I know her rent plus bills will exceed the max maintenance loan. I'm envious of anyone who picked a college which gave accommodation for all years.

If ds ate twice a day at the college canteen 7 days a week, he'd spend 60 - 70 a week on food. He's not going to do that, but still.... I wouldn't be surprised if £100 a week is a possible figure, if it includes drinks and going out as well.

DD's loan isn't the minimum amount, but topping it up to the maximum means she has more disposable income after bills and food than we do per person, given that she pays nothing for necessary transport, phone, broadband, insurance, etc. We pay her a set amount monthly. She also has odd amounts of earnings both here and at the university, which tend to accumulate and give her an additional cushion if she needs it.

Also check HOW they will bill you. DD's college gets you to pre pay for dinner, then does a charge back for any meals which were signed out for in advance (unfortunately around 60% is refunded) the following term. Other colleges may offer PAYG for hall.

Most students don’t eat all meals in hall. My dd ate most dinners there but had cereal in her room for breakfast and most days made sandwiches/beans on toast for lunch. Kitchens are generally small and basic but enough to do this kind of thing. Makes eating much more affordable.

It's my impression from this site and friends (though I could be wrong) that Oxford tends to be more expensive than Cambridge. I think I'm right in saying all Cambridge colleges provide accommodation (albeit not all on site) for all undergraduates for example and that tends to be cheaper than having to find a house.
DD's college bills her directly termly for accommodation costs. Laundry is free. Food is PAYG and she reckons she eats in the buttery a maximum of 3 evenings a week and brunch at weekends. It's massively subsidised so she spends around £4 on a meal. She estimates that cooking for herself costs half that. Her main expenses are formals (she does seem to go to a lot but they are still cheap for what they are), alcohol (she doesn't drink in bars but does drink before they go out so supermarket prices), sports (she has picked a relatively expensive sport to take up in terms of cost per week and her college doesn't seem to subsidise much) and travel (which isn't a lot but she has come back/gone to visit friends a few times plus travelled in the summer). We pay for her phone. But she has definitely come away from this year with money to spare and her accommodation next year is cheaper than this. She is saving though because 3rd year accommodation tends to be expensive in her college and she reckons she can put this year's and next year's excess to pay for that.

@Greatauntdymphna I think from that post, ds is going to be at the same college as your dd so that's reassuring, and helpful re the third year accommodation.

We just had a bank holiday trip to Dunelm. I was smugly thinking I'd managed to give ds nearly everything he needs from stuff in the house, but 'just a few bits' added up significantly. Particularly the things he doesn't need but would like, such as a big new throw. Sigh.

Hello, Proggymat. I am new to this chat, too, and also will be a new Oxford parent.
I can’t recommend a hotel but hope someone else can help you. Perhaps try Airbnb instead? Might be easier to find a dog friendly place. Good luck! It all feels very daunting at the moment but the posts here are helpful.

@Panicmode1 DS (Oxford) has no loan and we give him £300 per month during term time (so £1800 per year as the terms are short!) His accommodation is paid for termly separately. His college has a PAYG system but he hardly ever eats there and prefers to self cater. He's not a big party goer or much of one for formals and so finds this perfectly doable to live on fairly comfortably. Meals in college cost about £4-5 for an evening meal, so pretty reasonable.
All in, DS manages on less than what the maximum loan would be and works in the holidays to supplement.

@beeswain that's really helpful, thank you.

And also to everyone who has also commented and helped - I really appreciate your comments.

DH and I want him to be able to enjoy his time and don't want him to feel too much like the 'poor state school' child, but don't want him too high on the hog either!! As he's doing engineering, I think his workload will be fairly considerable (so hopefully he will have less time to drink his money away than his parents did with our 5 or 6 contact hours a week 😂), but I don't want him to be constantly stressed about it and to be able to pursue his hobbies through the uni clubs and societies without us having to constantly sub him.

DD always got the full loan due to our less than ideal job situation when she started. She pretty much catered for herself, other than some formals. She eats a vegan diet at uni and buys food either at Sainsbury's in West Cambridge which is near her department or the market.

One hack that's worth passing on is that her college has a corkage charge as they want you to buy their wine. DD bought a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine then took the empty bottles and kept them in her wardrobe. When we went to a formal in early 2020, she asked us to bring some wine then expertly decanted it into the 2 empty bottles so we didn't have to pay. Judging by the way she decanted it, she has done this on a number of occasions.

DD1 gets the minimum loan, so we pay her accommodation and give her £100pw during term time. DD2 is just about to start her first year at a different university. Her accommodation costs a lot more, but includes some meals, so we're going to pay for that, but no extra money on top.

DD1 is thinking of doing a post-grad course/qualification, so we're looking at an overlap of two years when we pay out for two lots of studying costing 17-18k.

I hope your four kids are spread out in ages @Panicmode1. It will be a lot cheaper for you if you can get them all into Cambridge, as the accommodation is relatively cheap!

@CinnamonJellyBeans - not really - DD is in Lower 6th and only 15 months younger, and the others are currently 14 and 12. However, DD is going to take a gap year and may do a degree apprenticeship rather than going to university anyway.

I don't think the younger two are going to be going to Oxford or Cambridge - one is an extremely talented artist so I can see him going somewhere more creative, and the other one is only 12 - very bright but supremely unwilling to make any extra effort, so Oxbridge will not be for him....!

Yeah, DD2 is a real child. Very slapdash and not competitive at all. She did briefly consider Oxbridge after she accompanied her sister on pre-interview visits, but soon changed her mind when she heard about the workload. I have never really pushed her to work any harder than she wants, as she is smart enough to make her own decisions. She has bizarrely ended up with a great set of A level grades, which were well in excess of her predicted grades and her Russell Group offer. None of us have any idea where they came from. We are still in shock.

It's financially difficult with multiple students, but they both got a free state education. I didn't have to pay a penny for the private school grades, so I honestly don't mind paying now.

Thanks all who replied about rental period. She has the choice of 29, 33 or 37 weeks. She is still deciding but will probably go for 33. This thread is so helpful - already learning so much!

Cambridge parents: I forgot the Quack Snacks. If your DC are in one of the colleges that has access to the backs, these are great. The geese and ducks will soon recognise your children better than the porters do (that's not a joke) and come running.

Also sign up to the freeprints app. Your DC will send you a million pictures of their college in the first few weeks, which you can get printed very cheaply, or turned into photobooks, which make nice gifts for grandparents.

Question from an old-timer....lucky DS2 (O) has told me he'll have a larger college bed this coming year which is two single mattresses but on one frame. Will he need super-king size bedding or king-size? His third year room will be much bigger and really lovely with an en suite. He gets all three years in college.

Meanwhile, poor DS1(C) has had a challenging time with his accommodation - all in college too however. His first year en suite room was tiny, very noisy and the long corridor outside his room was 'party capital' for people from different corridors. For his second year, he was one of the very very few put in a different accommodation block with his friends placed quite far away and in one of the only college rooms without an en suite. It was his fifth choice.

So last term, he especially emailed the accommodation office, explaining how he'd got his 5th choice last year and asking if in his final year, in the 3rd years accommodation block, (where he assumed he'd be) he could request a room overlooking a quieter part of the college grounds. He'd known of at least two girls who'd instantly had their requests granted similarly.

He got no reply and a few weeks later, emailed again. He still got no reply.....Then a few days ago, he learned that he'd been put in the same accommodation block as last year - which is mostly for the overspill of second years, not for third years and has no ensuite rooms at all but this time, in an even worse and smaller room!

The only consolation is that this is the cheapest accommodation in the college and actually a nicer 'period' type building and he seems completely fine about it. However, I don't know why his communications with the accommodation office were completely ignored though, nor why he's ended up not even in a third year block at all. Hopefully the second years won't be too noisy when he's studying for his finals this year but it's a huge contrast (once again) to DS2 at Oxford.

I would just buy double bed size mutterphore because wrestling a king size let alone a super king in and out of the washing machine is too horrible a prospect to be worthwhile.

Accommodation people vary enormously across colleges even within Oxford, as do the systems for allocation. It's not a Cambridge as opposed to Oxford thing, just luck of the draw.

If it's any consolation mutterphore DS (Ox) is back to basic accommodation for 3rd year. First and third years all get the basic 10 to a staircase, 2 showers, one kitchenette and it's the second years who get the nicer, more modern en-suite, smaller staircases. He's thrilled as he has a sink (some may remember at his college in the basic accommodation there is EITHER a sink or wardrobe, not both!). Which is fine as the concept of 'floordrobe' appears to have established itself over the summer 🙄