DH is limiting Y12 DC to universities in the north due to ££££

[BatteredHonda]

DC is in Y12 and wants to apply to KCL, Bristol and Exeter - alongside other unis. DC will qualify for minimum maintenance loan and we are therefore expected to top up/pay the accommodation. We struggle to make ends meet as it is so DH has said DC canNOT apply to southern unis - let alone London ones. He is recommending Leicester, Newcastle, Swansea, Belfast etc instead. DC is furious but I do get where DH coming from. What are your thoughts?

We encouraged similar.

I think some history departments have options on military history. I think Bristol might. War studies is a bit niche. The army take candidates with all sorts of degrees. DDs ex classmate did Geography. Another did Economics and Finance. I think the army train you to be what they want!

Warwick is funny cost of living wise. Its actually in Coventry not Warwick but on the edge (although with a good bus service). The students are generally relatively wealthy and things like the canteen are expensive. Warwick students tend to live and go out in Leamington or actual Warwick after first year and also in Earlsdon in Coventry. All of which are quite expensive for the Midlands. The sports facilities are relatively limited from what I'm aware of.

Warwick do has a massive sports complex. It’s very flash

Hi OP,

sorry if you’ve already stated, what grades is your DS targetting? I’d be surprised if Bristol is much different to Durham in terms of competitiveness of entry.

If DS wants Exeter, Bristol, KCL or Durham he presumably is intelligent enough to know he will need high grades? Bristol is AAA and Durham is AAA star. Durham also has war modules. Anyone with these predicted grades is right to look at these universities.

Just to add, on the sports front, Loughborough while still being a top university overall is not necessarily the best for any given sport. Of the 3 sports mentioned by @BatteredHonda as being of interest to her DS, Loughborough is streets ahead of anywhere else in swimming, but isn't top in either cricket or rowing (in fact not even in the top 10 for the latter).

It's a little like the overall academic league tables v subject-specific tables – the former gives you a fairly small amount of relevant information, it's only when you dig down a bit into the details you get a more precise picture. And as with academics you can find small pockets of excellence in unexpected places – NTU for example appears in the top 10 of quite a large number of sports.

Apologies for the slight digression, thought it might be of some interest.

Oops I forgot a whole part of the complex. How annoying you can't edit. I used to work on one of the campus sites rather than study there. I'd forgot some of the sections. Currently selling my house to an MA student there!

Just popping on to say York does not have cheap accommodation. It is more expensive than Bristol! Leeds is cheap.

Just checked the plaza halls in Leeds. £180 now, was £150 when DS was there. Is that cheap?

Ds is booked into there for next year. He will be paying £149 per week for a 51 week contract or it was about £170 for a 44 week contract.

Clarence Dock is a lot cheaper but it is a lot further away.

Private rentals.

Lancaster
Shared:Bedrooms with shared bathrooms start from £129.71 per week. Lancaster you just choose 2 types of accommodation. ''Bedrooms with shared bathrooms'', these will be like Pendle standard, Grizedale standard where 8 rooms share a kitchen and two bathrooms. Furness also have standard rooms with shared bathrooms. might be worth googling the colleges as they have their own pages.
So for arguments sake DS goes for the cheapest at £129.71 x 40 weeks = £5188.40 - your you say you would get minimum maintanence loan £3597, you would therefore have to find £1591 to stump up for the difference for the accommodation, and then his upkeep, should DS does not work. Its got a great sports centre as well, and they have a big sports following, they have a varsity with York called Roses.

other unis,
Cheapest at York is £99 for halifax, but you have to choose more than 1 choice.
It jumps up to £143 is the next choice up. then £148. Not sure how many choice it is now, but when eldest daughter applied in 2020 we checked and it was 7 choices. So the Halifax £99 choice is not so much appealing when the 6 others are way more expensive.

Lincoln looked at this with youngest dd last year. Apart from one, the rest were way too expensive. you might as well live down south.

Loughborough looks pretty reasonable in price and Birmingham does as well.

You do have to be aware that at Lancaster most of the shared bathroom rooms aren’t at that low price of £129. It’s only really rooms in old Bowland, some old Pendle and Furness Perimeter. Most of the other shared bathroom flats like Bowland ASH (what used to be Lonsdale) are more expensive and the townhouses in County and Grizedale are more expensive again even though they’re still shared bathroom. Most rooms on campus aren’t shared bathroom, they’re en suite. It’s roughly 2/3 en suite 1/3 shared

@sammyjoanne is that the minimum loan for living at home? Minimum for 2022 / 23 living away, outside London, is £4524, though this still leaves a few hundred to make up. And leaving about £5200 shortfall from the maximum, so around those figures, perhaps the OP's DH could bring himself to do what a lot of us do - pay for the accommodation and leave DS to use the loan for all other expenses (plus getting a job, if necessary)?

I just googled minimum maintanence loan and it came up with that on the search page. Your right It is true that does still leave a few hundred to make up at £4524.
We do it a bit back to front but it works for us .DD1 her maintance loan covers all the accommodation fees and we pay for her upkeep monthly. DD2 her maintanance loan wont cover all the accommodation so we will pay the difference and her upkeep monthly (she said shes going to get a job as well hopefully as she wants to save some money).
I suppose it depends on how much they will get in loan and how much they can afford accommodation + upkeep combined, and have a work around as to what money goes where.

Daughter stayed in a Grizedale townhouse in 2020. Lancs was a choice of two lots of accommodation over two colleges.
Youngest DD just applied for Reading accommodation and had to choose 5. Two accommodations were fine, we could afford, the other 3 was into £7-7.5k+ and we was really stretching it. Im glad she got her first choice which was one of the cheaper options, but its still a risky thing to take on. If your under a budget I do think having too many accommodation options at a uni can become a factor when some of them are out of your price range because you could end up with one of them.

@sammyjoanne We do it a bit back to front but it works for us .DD1 her maintance loan covers all the accommodation fees and we pay for her upkeep monthly. DD2 her maintanance loan wont cover all the accommodation so we will pay the difference and her upkeep monthly

This is what we did with DS and will do the same with DD. If DD had a terms loan in her bank account it would be gone in a fortnight. If it's used towards accommodation, we can "pay as we go" giving her spending money, which seems far more doable to me- and my savings stay in my account.

It's seems odd that so many MNers take rent from their DC on apprenticeships "to help them learn to budget" but others have DC who can sensibly budget their maintenance loan over a term I suspect they don't, and are significantly topped up monthly my bank of Mum and Dad

When DD was at university her loan matched her hall fee. We always paid her monthly. Like a wage. Those living at home tend to save as the loan is generous. Deposits for houses in some cases years ago. Not sure that’s a good idea now!

We do similar. For one thing it means that we don't have to come up with a large amount all in one go (most halls fees are paid termly) so we can pay ds his maintenance in line with when we are paid.

His rent in Leeds is approx £7,000 per year which is more than our parental contribution.

I think it's entirely sensible to consider the cost of accommodation/living in university towns/cities, unless money isn't a problem for parents. If they are involved in subsidising their offspring, then they should be involved in the decision-making.

On a different issue, I thought The Guardian universities league table was the least well-regarded of all of them, with The Sunday Times one the most so.

@LouisCatorze Agreed. Guardian is an outlier. Complete university guide or Times are reliable.

The full grants were only ever available to the lowest paid families. Most people were required to pay the student maintenance contribution decades ago! No fees of course. Many families never had a golden age of free maintenance.

I wonder if the student loan system has changed how parents consider university costs. Perhaps there's an assumption that because they're lent the money, and there are no grants, all DC get an amount that covers their living costs. It can be Year 12 when some parents find out that's not the case.

Plus, many parents have little idea how expensive student rents are now. Lifting the cap on student numbers has led to a huge increase in rents in high tier university cities and that happened in recent memory.