"Mum, did you know it's much cheaper to rent in Cambridge than in Oxford?"

[Milliways]

so I reply:
"well DD, it's MUCH cheaper in Aberystwyth !"

Obviously, she's decided to aim high.

She's informed me it's an average £10k pa so maybe I need another job!!

Honestly, how much DOES it cost to avoid student debt these days?

But £10k pa would presumably be the whole house & she wouldn't be living in it on her own. DS is curently paying £240 a month in Leamington (nearest town to Warwick & full of students) - there are 5 of them in the house & they have it for 11 months so the landlord is getting £13,200 a year.

she can have a room in my house for £10k a year!

I was trying to cost the rent+tuition fees+living costs+book costs etc to brace ourselves for the worst.

I've heard about the shorter terms at Oxbridge, which does help with rent, and some of DD's friends only have about 1 days worth of lectures a week so they have time to earn money!

Rusty, do you pay the rent for him, or does he have to take out loans etc (if you don' mind me asking)

can be hidden costs in other places.

e.g. at Reading, I have to print out quite a lot of handouts at my own expense. also there aren't loads of copies of stuff in the library so i buy more books. also it's a campus uni so people who live there spend a lot on travelling into town it seems to me. also i must say reading in particular seems to have a thing where all the students go home several weekends a term at vast cost.

oxbridge has loads of resources, so lots of books, lots of travel awards, book grants etc, they are both city centre unis so you can walk/bike most places. however, the downfall i found with cambridge was making friends with people much richer than me, i ate out much more than i could afford to because my mates invited me out. that could have happened in a lot of places i guess. this was years ago though so prob v out of date

what course does she want to do? what is it about the Cambridge course she likes?

She doesn't really know what she wants yet, which is part of the problem. She does accept that she must choose a course then uni, not the other way round.

She is heavily into Eng Lit, & mainly languages. Wants to work abroad, fancies foreign office or similar (or journalism) - so is actually more drawn to Oxford but has been doing internet research on costs, as she is aware we are not loaded.

Doing Mathes, Eng Lit, History French & German.

He has a 2 loans, one for the fees (£3,000 last year, £3,070 this year, next year will be £3,145) and one for maintenance, but he can only take 75% of the maximum for that one because we earn too much. It works out at approx. £1100 per term. We pay his rent & he pays everything else.

The loans start to be paid back once he earns over £15,000 - I think they take 9% of anything over that amount. The interest is supposed to be at the rate of inflation - it has just doubled from 2.4% to 4.8%

I have the Student Finance website bookmarked....

You don't have to go to Oxford to be a diplomat btw - my BIL is an ambassador & he went to Bristol.

Are you at Reading, choosyfloosy? I did my BA and PhD there and worked there for a while too. I basically went to university there in (ahem) 1985 and only properly moved away in 2003.

Re. shorter Oxbridge terms - that's true, but if you rent privately (as opposed to living in college) you'll be paying for the whole year, not just term-times. Also a lot of other universities now work on a semester system, which may mean that students are not around much more than in Oxbridge.

3 x 8-week terms = 24 weeks

We work on a system of two 11-week semesters, plus a two-week exam period in January and the same in May = 26 weeks, so not so very different really.

No harm in aiming high, though. What does she want to do?

A lot of Oxford colleges can offer live in accommodation for the entire degree course now.

I presume Cambridge is now the same.

terms are shorter, but I think that Oxford will not allow students to work during term time.

Not sure who well this could be policed, if at all

Good Website Rusty, Thanks!

Life will become clearer when she does decide what she actually does want to do!

Bother! Just typed and lost a long message. Have just seen your message above about what she wants to do.

I would tend to agree with her that for languages Cambridge would be preferable to Oxford. Oxford courses are very traditional and resistant to change (and I say that as a medievalist myself!). IIRC the 'modern' paper barely goes into the C20th! If she checks out the syllabus offered in language departments in other Russell Group universities (including Cambridge) she'll find it's a lot more flexible - often combining the traditional (of which I approve wholeheartedly) with the more innovative (which is also a very good thing).

If she's serious about languages you're welcome to CAT me. I work in the largest School of Modern Lanaguages in the UK, so am well placed to give you some info.

Modern History in oxford starts with the fall of the roman empire.

Or at least it did in the 80s

Love it, MB! Mind you, I feel bad about slagging off Oxford, cos I didn't get in as an UG and then I also completely fluffed a job interview there, so it feels a bit like sour grapes when I tell people about its faults.

By the way, Milliways, don't ask me anything about student finances... I am as freaked by the prospect of my dds going to university as the next person. Luckily I have at least another 11 years to worry about it (by which time the fees alone will probaly be £10k per annum ).

Thanks Ellbell.

She has notices that she would have been better off if she had studied Chinese & Arabic

MB

They are not supposed to get term time jobs at Oxbridge though...they're supposed to cram so much work into the terms because they are so short.

a friend's son did English at Cambridge and came home with a reading lists of about 20 closely-typed sides of A4

I loved the 7 year I spent at oxford.

This was in the old glory days for the Grant.

My father worked in a factory and my mum worked part time in a sweet shop. I got a full grant. After 7 years, I left with savings of £200.

them were the days.

yurt -depends on the college - some of them don't have rooms for all 3 years - but most of them have a list of subsidised places you can live.

Don't discount the idea of starting a new language from scratch, Milliways. She could definitely do that with Arabic or the East Asian languages or Russian, as well as with less frequently taught European languages like Italian and Portuguese.

Neither DH or I went to Uni. She will be "the first" in our family, except for DH's cousin.

Milliways - What GCSE grades did she get?

She got 11 A's! (including A for all coursework and every modular exam)

(She did Maths, Eng Lang, Eng Lit, French, German, History, Geography, RE, Biology, Chem & Physics.)

Wow! Well done MilliwaysJnr! Please please please can you send her to my department!?