What is studying in London really like?

[Tamar86]

DD is very keen on applying to university in London - UCL is her top choice (modern languages), and she also likes the look of Kings (European studies).

I’m concerned about:

The cost, especially in second and final year. Worried we might really struggle to afford accommodation. I know you get a slightly bigger loan in London, but worried it won’t be enough. We live several hours away, so commuting not an option.

The student experience - I’ve heard stories about most students commuting/living really spread out etc etc so it is hard to get to know people.

I actually did a 1 year masters at UCL myself. But I was older, already living with friends and able to commute in from a cheaper location, so slightly different. I didn’t need the social side of the uni, and I didn’t really get to know what it was like. Anyway, I expect things have changed in 20 years.

Not sure whether I should be fully supportive and enthusiastic, or the wet-blanket voice of reality.
It’s an expensive mistake if the experience turns out not to be so great in reality.

Dd also likes the look of Cardiff and Nottingham, which are much more affordable, and maybe offer a more standard tight-knit student experience. But of course UCL has more international prestige than either of them.

Planning a road trip in the summer to look at them all. London as a city is more exciting than Cardiff or Nottingham, let’s face it.
So it would be useful to have some up-to-date facts and personal experiences to discuss and weigh up.

I went to UCL as an undergraduate and loved it. London is a fabulous city to be a student in. More about being in London and enjoying and getting to know the city than being on campus - although halls of residence/UCL itself did feel like their own campus.

That said, DS is now considering London (UCL or Imperial) and the costs are definitely higher than elsewhere in the country. I think if he goes to London he will need to get a part-time job, in a way that he might not if he were to go to Sheffield or Durham (he's not a big spender). I know of someone who is currently at UCL and the housing situation seems to have been doable.

Not too late to change choices by any means, she will apply after the summer, but trying to co-ordinate some visits and open days this term or during summer holiday.

MFL would be German and French, and for European studies I think she has to choose just one, so probably French.

I will suggest Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bristol, as I don’t think any of them have particularly been on the radar.
I’ve never been to Bristol, but assuming it has a buzzy city vibe, I think that’s what she’s after.

Leeds is our closest uni, so likely to be ruled out on that basis, I think she wants to be a bit further away.
I think London is mainly about the lure of the big city, so much to do, particularly shopping, live music gigs etc, I don’t think Dd massively cares about prestige (that was more my thinking).
Not that she will be going to many gigs if she has to work all the time! 10k for first year accommodation is about 3k more than we have budgeted for (and about 4K more than I was hoping for)

Good to hear of other students having a great time and making it work in London though.

@Tamar86 My DD never wanted to work abroad so Bristol was fine. It is, however, worth thinking about careers after graduating.

I would say she should look at Durham as well as Bristol, Lancaster, York (if they offer German?) and Newcastle as well at Nottingham. Linguists do get offers and doing German really helps! ABB is good enough for lots of excellent courses. Edinburgh can be expensive too if it’s 4 years living there plus it’s not outranking other unis for MFL.

@Tamar86 Your £7000 budget is difficult for London. I would think £6000 is impossible but it won’t be in other uni cities.

Yeh agree, £6k more than possible in plenty of city unis.

DD and now DS2 paid or pay a good deal less. DS2's final year accom from July is around £5.5k for the whole year. And DD's a couple of years ago was even less, about £90 pw.

Not helpful in the sense that neither of them was in a big big city (and in fact MFL is not offered (!) at DS2's uni) but gives you an idea. I bet similar prices are on offer in Sheffield, Newcastle, Brum, Manchester (picking big cities out of the air!). Maybe not so much in Bristol tbh.

I went to UCL many moons ago with dreams of big city night life and then reality of costs of clubs/gigs/theatres hit tho there are much better cheap things now and offers for students.
Plus points is you don’t have the big post graduation moving to London thing that DC have to grapple with if that is where the opportunities in their field is. Minus points are that friendship groups aren’t as tight and travel costs are high from second year on and going to see friends can mean travelling far and wide as housing can be anywhere and you can end up with splits over where to live ie north or south of the river - different boroughs/areas have v different vibes for some people. In retrospect, I’d have gone elsewhere as I think the uni experience would have been better on a campus or among smaller student population. But doing MFL and doing related things beyond the course would be easier as bigger cohorts of speakers and associated events.

Definitely need to research to see which unis are best for the subjects they want to do- makes a big difference to their job prospects.

London is a very high percentage of overseas students So can he harder to socialise

@clary Bristol has various halls priced at under £6000 for self catering rooms. Not en suite but perfectly ok and not sharing as far as I can see. DD shared when at Bristol. It’s not the cheapest from y2-4 but it’s very good for MFL. So if DD wants a buzzy city, Bristol is one. Newcastle might suit too.

I was thinking of once not in halls tbh - threads quoting high prices. Someone I know has a DD who is renting a student room in a house share for £650 pm (the mum thought that was for the whole house fgs) which is more like £7.5k.

Agree Newcastle may be a shout. Shame Leeds is out tbh.

£660 a month would be pretty cheap in London within striking distance of UCL. The bad news is that many landlords want 50 weeks though. Also many DC want to fall out of bed and get to lectures in 5 mins. Flats are priced to reflect that and newer or renovated ones are more money. Unfortunately the stock of housing hadn’t increased but the number of students has.

@PhuckyNell - I would be grateful if you would pm me the name of the halls in Bethnal Green please? TIA.

That's not quite true of Nottingham. There is self catered accommodation and it's a zebra crossing distance from campus and adjacent to the catered halls. DD is in catered halls this year, on a 31week contract, and she pays just over £6000 for the privilege. That includes access to sports centre ( which was additional and expensive for elder DD at Birmingham). DD at Nottingham has made friends with people in a range of accommodation and us living with some from her hall and some from self catered accommodation, next year. In our experience, Nottingham is pretty affordable and easily comparable to Birmingham.

Tbf @Tickledtrout I've acknowledged that the SC accomm is not far away. It's not on campus tho

The catered halls are all from about 200 pw so I guess a 31 week year is why your dd's is relatively low. Does she have to empty her room each term?

I still think it's poor there's no budget option tho (like, £4.5k py)

Definitely wouldn’t choose Durham if she’s looking for a buzzy city.

My DD is at Newcastle and it is both cheap and a buzzy city.

No idea re MFL courses there though.

DD currently doing an MFL course at UCL, she's on her year abroad in France (which she is really enjoying).

DD has loved being in London, 1st year in SC halls, 2nd year in private rental with friends. The private rental was expensive but v central, no travel costs to campus needed (1k p/m).

DD receives a bursary from UCL, because of her academic performance - she didn't know it was offered until she started the course and it had been awarded to her. I believe they give this to around 10 students each year (sorry for vague info, just what I had through DD).

I would encourage students to at least work over the summers and save up. There will always be pros and cons to any university choice, but ask DD to draw up a spreadsheet, go through it together to see how feasible the costs of being in London vs how much she wants to be there.

@SalGoodwoman What do you see as very expensive? I assume not £650 a month?

There are flats like Claredale House at Bethnal Green which are budget conscious and can be rented for 39 weeks. Easy enough access to UCL but not a traditional area for UCL students. Buzzy though.

I agree Durham isn’t buzzy but their MFL dept is good.

Yes, of course commuting/travel costs need to be budgeted for too, in London.
You couldn’t walk from Bethnal Green (well you could, I suppose, but you’d need to be organised.)
We will definitely price up the halls and transport, and look into what grants and bursaries are available.
Maybe a gap year trying to save up would make sense, but I don’t want her to forget her languages, they’re the sort of thing you really need to keep practising.

With regards other suggestions, Dd says they had a talk on choosing courses and unis, which mentioned Scotland has an extra year - lots of people were put off, Dd included. Modern languages is an extra year anyway, so 5 years does sound a bit extreme, I suppose.
She actually really likes Durham as a place, we visited quite recently for a wedding, and she thought it was beautiful. But not sure if it would end up feeling too small. And the entry requirements are as high as Cambridge.
Lancaster they had a school visit there, she said staff were lovely, but campus was in the middle of nowhere a bus ride from the town.
Newcastle is definitely worth a look, and Bristol looks good too - she had dismissed it from her research because “I didn’t realise it was a city”. Lucky she is not applying for geography!
She pulled a face at both York and Sheffield.

She actually really likes Durham as a place, we visited quite recently for a wedding, and she thought it was beautiful. But not sure if it would end up feeling too small ... Newcastle is definitely worth a look
Does she realise how close Durham (University) and Newcastle (city) are? The train journey can be as little as 12 minutes.

@TizerorFizz I'm not sure I understand what you're asking of me... but DD was paying £1k per month in her 2nd year (not including bills) and I considered that very expensive, but she was incredibly close to UCL. 1st year halls were around £150 per week IIRC, again within walking distance to campus.

Her loans covered a lot of the accommodation, we topped up the rest.

Apart from the location, do take a look at course content - different lecturers will offer different specialities obviously, and that may influence your DD's choice. And where the university sends the students on their year abroad, that might make difference for you.

@SalGoodwoman That was what I was asking. I agree it’s expensive and surely not a choice open to all. Thats a huge chunk of the loan, if not all of it, for those less well off. So it really is down to poorer dc being further away from uni or parents might need to find at least £10,000 a year if dc do not work. Obviously many haven’t got that kind of money available. So for MFL it’s difficult to say it’s worth it.

Many of the top unis have excellent partnerships with unis abroad. Jobs are problematic now so unis or British Council are the best options. DD aimed high for uni abroad and she looked at international rankings. Plus where she wanted to live for a semester!

Goodness, 1k per month rent without bills I think is just not feasible for us. That is more than we pay for our own house!

I think a serious conversation about looking elsewhere needs to be had. I don’t want to curb her ambition, but it’s just such a lot of money. And as @TizerorFizz says, there are good universities for MFL elsewhere, it doesn’t have to be London.

Perhaps an exciting city or two (Berlin and Paris maybe) for the year abroad could make up for not being in London, that’s a good way of approaching it.

DC are in mid late 20s so a while ago, but we did not find London any more expensive than Bristol. The difference being that DS lived in a ex-council flat, actually quite close to UCL, and they used the living room as a bedroom. It did not matter as the library was open 24/7, there was lots going on on campus and there was the whole of London. China Town for cheap food, theatre, cinema etc.

The SU at Bristol was dead and socialising seemed to happen in coffee bars, clubs, etc. Overall we found Bristol more expensive.

One big difference is that London students, perhaps because of the large number of overseas students, tend to be much more focussed on course, rather than "the University experience". My DC liked that (DD spent a year at Imperial as well as Bristol.) Others will be at University for "the experience" and perhaps feel London is too nerdy. .

I had always though UCL was very well regarded for languages. They offer a lot of interesting study abroad options. Having bilinguals on your course has to be a good thing surely, especially if you aim is to achieve real conversational fluency.

My experience is that once you get to a certain level (and I speak 4 foreign languages to a good level) bilingualism is not everything. More depends on your ability to understand the subject matter. (Selemat Hari Raya kepada semua orang-orang melayu!)

You might ask Tizer about how long ago her daughter(s) was a student. As a London landlord I am not getting that per room from an HMO. I also thought that she owned a property in West London that her student daughters lived in.