Are student halls in London worth it?

[CautiousLurker01]

So DD has offers from KCL and UCL and firmed/insurance accepted. They are in the top 5 nationally for her subject and top 10 globally so she isn’t interested in going anywhere else, before it is suggested. We’re delighted for her. She has had a difficult few years so achieving a place anywhere is huge and we are so proud of her.

However, halls at both unis come in at around £14,500 for a 40 week contract (all bills etc included) and she was keen to ‘get involved’ at college and make friends, become independent etc.

My issue is that, having been a recent PG student myself, all my fellow students made it clear that they commuted to save on costs and the only ‘resident’ students were the overseas ones (and they grouped together by nationality, so all those from India formed a clique of their own - they were all lovely, but kept to themselves socially). Talking to my current supervisors it seems that courses are structured to allow students to be in college a couple of days a week to accommodate commuting and part time jobs, as they know students need the income and work experience on their CVS. We actually live 50mins by train from London, both colleges a short walk or bus ride from Waterloo. My fear is that we will commit to £14.5k a year to live in a 10msq room where DD may not actually meet anyone when she could just as easily meet friends through her course and societies and jump on a train home at night? Saving us around £11k a year.

We will also in Sep 2026 have a second DC studying in London, so we potentially will be paying £28-30kps for two-three years (both hope to do Masters afterwards). My DH works in London 30-50% of the time and potentially has access to funds that would mean he could, in fact, just about afford to buy a 2-3bed flat and use the £2500-3000k a month that we would otherwise be spending on rents by paying towards a mortgage. On paper, this is a no-brainer. DD, and later, DS, would have a flat in London so could mix with friends, be at uni, get a PT job etc but longer term any increased equity in the flat could be released and given to them to get on the property ladder. We have financially planned for this for decades so can afford the £30kpa, though not without sacrifice. Kids will only be entitled to @£3k if stay at home and £6.5k-ish (in maintenance loans) if in London due to household income.

The question is, are we being selfish in seeing this in terms of minimising the debt they’d leave uni with (and, yes, the fact that DH could use it when working up in London, rather than use hotels) and should we fund them both to live in halls so that they get the ‘full uni experience’? They are both incidentally entitled rooms in halls all three years, btw. I have friends whose DCs are loving uni, but have not made friends in halls (or worse, really do not get on with the people in their dorm/house or the floor of their halls) and ended up commuting home every weekend anyway. I am just concerned that living in halls in London will bear no resemblance to my experience of the same in York Uni in the 90s or DH’s experience… at a crippling cost.

Does anyone have DCs in London halls who can reassure me or give me a current picture of what they are like at the moment?

Sorry TL;DR: are Halls in London worth the cost, or will they be full predominantly of (lovely) overseas students who are not doing the same course and have no shared interests with my DD?

@CautiousLurker01 regarding the cost of the en-suite, I don't know about KCL, but UCL have an arrangement whereby they make reasonable adjustments in student accommodation for disabled students. This means the meet the difference in cost between the non-ensuite room and the en-suite room if your child has a disability which means they need the en-suite. It might be worth checking that out. You have to supply medical evidence for the need of course. The same goes for needing any other arrangements such as being close to bloomsbury campus.

This is quite separate from any DSA arrangements they might make.

I think I might have mentioned this to you already on the other current London students thread.

I think that's exactly the right decision @CautiousLurker01. I'd also say there's no harm in contacting the unis now - specifically the student wellbeing or disability support service - and asking what they'd advise for your DD's particular situation. The accommodation people at my old employer were amazing and went above and beyond to ensure students felt happy and safe where they lived. It might help all of you to feel more secure about your decisions.

Yes, I’d taken some of that on board but clearly not understood it properly - I thought it came as a result of the DSA application and not separately. We need to contact KCL disability/SEN team so that they gave walk me through this and how it works, but we also saw that several of the KCL residences (we now see there is more variety in the UoL ones) don’t offer any non- ensuite rooms so assumed (perhaps wrongly) that they therefore can’t offer a reduced non-ensuite or discounted room rate?

DD only got the offer a couple of days ago so we’ve not had a chance to contact KCL yet, but I think that has to be the next step. Especially now DD and we are more comfortable with the decision to apply for halls now.

The feedback, good and bad, on experiences has been really useful as we’ve been batting it around all day!

I think DD rather likes the idea of students from lots of other unis all living together as it will broaden the mix of subjects and personalities she rubs up against. She nearly went to an art college, so being able to connect with the arty crowd would be great for her. Until this thread we had no idea intercollegiate residences existed (I don’t chat about this will fellow PG students, obviously, and strangely no-one I know has kids in London unis. No idea why - except to escape mum and dad which was why I went to York as an UG!). It’s been revelatory and DD is now much more relaxed about going, if a little overwhelmed by all the options she has to choose from. Thank you.

@CautiousLurker01

This is on the Kings website - definitely a separate process from DSA

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/accommodation/living-with-us/accommodation-disability-provision#:~:text=King's%20Residences%20endeavour%20to%20make,experience%2C%20in%20line%20with%20the

I think DSA used to cover the extra cost of an en suite or larger room if they were needed due to disability but not any more.

@lifeturnsonadime DD and I hadn’t made it to that page (or seen that it was there) so thank you for the signpost. Been trawling through the marketing vids for each residence and DD has been looking at tube and bus route maps 🤣 Her dad is more interested in which pubs are nearby…

Sometimes the links are tricky to find, but I think that that process looks slightly different from the UCL one so it might be worth a call to clarify the rent adjustment point. It's not clear on the UCL page either but it was processed very easily for my son after the evidence was sent through at the time we applied for the accommodation.

Good local pubs are good, so I can see your DH's point!

One tip for the social side, my son is also ND, is that he spent a load of time in the common room to start off with as his kitchen weren't immediately bonding, he's now really good friends with someone who does share his kitchen but he also bonded well with like minded people just through hanging out in the common room.

@CautiousLurker01 it's worth mentioning that if you wait till at least one of your children has an income (assuming a mortgage will be needed) then gift them the flat money as a deposit to buy a property together in their own names as first time buyers, then the stamp duty saving alone will probably more than cover the cost of a couple of years in halls, never mind what you will potentially save in future inheritance tax (assuming you live at least 7 years after the gift is made).

KCL accommodation is very expensive and students don't get a lot of choice in the matter.

@Ceramiq I’m not sure how selection for halls works but on reading the first post, it’s definitely not all £14,000. The halls you quoted are £3,000 cheaper. It’s fairly obvious many parents could never afford to top up to £14,000 so cheaper must be specified by some students. The cheapest I found was £8,000. Of course it doesn’t meet the OP’s specification but it’s definitely not true that all halls at KCL are £14,000. The cost of studying in London is making it elite though or only for students who can commute.

International Hall is University of London Intercollegiate Hall, not KCL. Every year the quota of rooms at the UoL Intercollegiate Halls varies by constituent college of the UoL. KCL is notorious for having a lot of pretty horrific high rise accommodation in its accommodation portfolio that is not easy to avoid.

@TizerorFizz not sure what your agenda is here with respect to my post, but I posted after looking at the first half a dozen properties listed in KGL’s accommodation pages. I post them here as you seem to think I am an elitist or a liar. After several days of reviewing every fricking link to every single property on KCL and UoL, yes, I have established there are a few - a FEW - cheaper options that we MAY be lucky enough to be allocated. But we will not know until the process begins formally.

Thankfully many other lovely PPs have been generous with their time and advice on this thread and stalled our huge panic - which is in part informed by the fact that we will have two children at uni at the same time (not something we had anticipated or planned for with a 3 year age gap) as well as a desire to support our eldest by trying to ensure she has the best possible experience.

…

We all have to trawl through web sites. It’s just best not to state £14,000 as the only option when it’s not. That’s all really. Both my DDs have studied in London and of course you might not get exactly what you want. That’s life. We bought in the end as DDs were going to work there too.

@CautiousLurker01 Ironically I have been lurking on this thread. I can't help on the disabled accommodations information unfortunately, but from what I've read, it does sound like 1st year in halls in London would be a good starting point for your DD in terms of being in the midst of it all, having lots of different people (from different courses, countries etc) to meet, and being able to take part in things without a long commute home after, etc.

I went to York but my BF at the time went to UCL and I visited him in halls in Bloomsbury. He found friends there very quickly and some of them became his housemates in the 2nd & 3rd years when his parents bought a house in north London (this was late 80s/ early 90s before prices soared). I am pretty sure his halls still exist, they were a 60's structure at the time.

There is no reason I should not state that halls come in at 14.5k, when I have shown the evidence that this is what has been presented to me (and indeed anyone looking at the college’s own pages). The post was not about these being our only option, it was about whether the experience she would get living in london halls was worth the uplift in spend over the much much smaller cost of commuting. It’s there in the title of the thread!!

Good for you that you went on to buy. Now please leave me alone.

DC2 is in year 2 in a London uni now. They made friends in hall last year and are now renting a flat with 2 of them.

DC1 graduated from a London uni last year and didn't have a great experience in halls, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the fact that the hall was in a horrible area (North Acton) and quite far from uni.

In both cases, there was a mix of nationalities in their hall apartments.

Happily. You didn’t look properly and your whole question is based on a false premise.

Since you don't seem to have DC currently at university in London or with any personal experience of KCL accommodation, perhaps your opinions aren't well informed?

DC2's hall last year was £13,100, so £14.500 sounds about right.

I was going to add that DC2 is a qualified lifeguard and earns around £160 every Sunday for an 11-hour shift in Central London.

Following with interest as my son is looking to apply in London for the following year and we are also a commutable distance. So I already mentioned he may have year 1 live in and then commute.

The biggest suprise from the thread is only 20% taught course!! What does that equate to in teaching hours? That surely is the biggest rip off!!

Thank you for commenting so positively - I do think we have both reached the conclusion that she should give it a try in halls. I think that’s the best most parents can hope for, even without ND issues. We’ve decided to take one year at a time and panic about the (costs of the) second year, when my DS goes up to uni, when it gets here.

Someone above has reminded me of the help the disability team will offer in choosing the best halls for her (proximity, size, best social activities teams, 24hr staff etc). I’ve emailed them to get the conversation started next week.

I know - am pleased they were upfront about it (the taught: independent study hours ratio is on the website as well as the offer letter) but her department seems to have a really active student society that puts on lots of events/projects which seem to build on the syllabus. Arts/humanities do have a massive reading component though, compared to many STEM subjects, so I can understand the ratio.

I have a friend at a non London uni shelling out just under £10k for her DDs halls… she has 12hrs a week of face to face tuition for 8 weeks in semester 1; similar for semester 2 because of dissertations and exams when all the housemates go home… but it’s a 50 week rental contract. She feels very aggrieved.

Am hoping the allure of London (and range of PT student jobs) may keep DD up in halls for more than 16 weeks though…

I see some of UCL halls’ have increased by 25% in less than 4 years! Disgraceful.