London vs non-London uni cost

[bendix]

Hi. DD will hopefully start uni next autumn and I'm trying to figure out how much the parental contribution should be. She's just applied to medical school - three courses outside of London and one in London - and wants to do an intercalated year as well, so that's 6 years total.

Bit of background: I'm a single parent, currently getting child support on an informal agreement from DD's dad. She lives with me and sees him regularly. This will end next summer, as DD turns 18 and should be starting uni Sep 2026. Because of my household income, DD will only qualify for the minimum maintenance loan. My partner has moved in very recently and we share living costs (except child-related).

I discussed with DD's father and we agreed to try and help her out with the living costs in full, so that she avoids getting the maintenance loan. However, if she gets a place at a uni in London, DD will likely need to get the maintenance loan, as the cost of living in London is way too high (roughly £6-7K higher each year, compared to outside of London). Minimum maintenance loan in London, away from home: £6,853/year in years 1-4 and £4,485/year in years 5-6.

She will get the tuition loan in any scenario, as we can't afford to pay that unfortunately. That's four years of tuition, as years 5 and 6 are paid by the NHS bursary.

Are these yearly costs realistic? I calculated for 12 months (except accomodation, which is for the academic year only).

• accomodation: £8,500 (or £13,000 in London)
• regular expenses/bills: £1,200 (mobile phone, Netflix, Spotify, contact lenses, gym membership, dental insurance)
• public transport, train, travel to placements: £1,200 (or £1,700 Oyster London)
• daily living (food, fun, clothes, toiletries, supplies etc.): £6,000 (or £7,200 in London)
• holidays & gifts - not included

This brings the total monthly parental contribution to the figures below (which her dad and I would split 50:50):

• £1,400 if she goes to uni outside of London (OR if she goes to uni in London, but gets the maintenance loan)
• £2,000 if she goes to uni in London and does NOT get the maintenance loan. (I very much doubt we can afford this... especially in years 5-6 when maintenance loan amount gets reduced)

This seems insane and a bit of a shock if I'm honest, as it's much higher than expected and what I read online on various sites. My friends with kids in indie schools are laughing at me, as they say uni is cheaper than independent school. But, we've never paid school fees, as DD went to a state school, her local mixed comprehensive, for both primary and secondary.

DD is willing to get jobs while at uni, to supplement her income, but I'm not sure how much a med student can work during the academic year due to workload... so it will likely be more like summer jobs or one offs?

Have I over-estimated the expenses? Am I missing something? Is it really a good idea not to get the maintenance loan at all? Or is it better to take the maintenance loan in any scenario, and maybe save those money that we would have given to her, and give it to get as a lump sum when she graduates?

Apologies for the length of the message. Any suggestions, opinions about the various financial options and considerations are welcome. Thank you.

accomodation: £8,500 (or £13,000 in London)

The bad news for you is accommodation is paid for 12 months of the year, whether they choose to live there or not (but don't medic study and do placements all year round anyway ?)

regular expenses/bills: £1,200 (mobile phone, Netflix, Spotify, contact lenses, gym membership, dental insurance)

£100pm seems high to me, but then we've never paid for dental insurance or contact lenses, so maybe they cost a lot ??

public transport, train, travel to placements: £1,200 (or £1,700 Oyster London)

Difficult to guess as will vary massively, depending where they end up. Some places are walkable. But some places might have placements that are tricky to get to.

daily living (food, fun, clothes, toiletries, supplies etc.): £6,000 (or £7,200 in London)

If they are there for 12 months a year, then this will be comfortable. If there is a year they aren't then this needn't be so high.

holidays & gifts - not included - that's fair enough. They live within their budget for these years.

This brings the total monthly parental contribution to the figures below (which her dad and I would split 50:50):

• £1,400 if she goes to uni outside of London (OR if she goes to uni in London, but gets the maintenance loan)
• £2,000 if she goes to uni in London and does NOT get the maintenance loan. (I very much doubt we can afford this... especially in years 5-6 when maintenance loan amount gets reduced)

I remember when my friend's dc was doing medical training - they do seem to have to regularly be paying for exams too. I can't remember the detail but remember being shocked at it. Not sure when that starts, but might be something else to factor in. Hopefully this will lift you off unanswered threads for someone with more recent / accurate detail to help you.

Remembering of course that the amount she will pay every month whilst earning, will be the same whether she takes the maintenance loan and the tuition fees, or if she just takes the tuition fees.

Some of these costs seem high to me, but the main one obvs is accommodation- which can vary hugely. Halls or a shared house in, say, Bristol could be £10k a year (what a friend is paying for their dc); halls or a shared house in Leicester as little as £4-5k a year (what DD (not a medic, but there is a med school there) paid, and prices are pretty stable). So that does depend on where she is - I believe that where your med school is is not key?

Otherwise my take:
bills - could be lower, phone £10pm, family Spotify? Netflix £7 to add to yours, gym £25. How much for lenses? But £100pm seems high for this element (tho my dailies do cost me £33 - but even then that’s more like £75.
transport - maybe about right for regular bus but could be 0 if on campus or walkable.
Food and fun - this is massive. Eat for £40pw x 40 weeks = 1600; even a generous 50 is only 2k. That leaves far more than needed for fun, esp as you have already taken out bus fares and gym.

I think less is more than doable; a realistic figure depending on accommodation, crucially, inho is about £10k paid but that does assume cheaper rent.

You’re right about private school ofc - it must seem like a lot less ££ to find.

I’m in my 20s and went to uni in London, it financially crippled me and I worked throughout my time at university - but I don’t regret it and being in London was worth the cost. Plus my salary now is on the higher side, like I’d say equivalent jobs in my sector elsewhere might be on £50k whereas I can push for £70k in London and that will only grow as I become more senior.

You really think she should just be given the money and doesn't need to get a job in the holidays? It would be desperately pampered (not to mention a bad look for the CV) to get the age of 24 and never had done any paid work. Min wage £10 an hour, £350 per working week, £4.2k per summer. More if you did overtime.

With my son, we split it 3 ways. £1200 per term from me, £1200 from his job and £1200 from student maintenance loan. I figure all his age group will have loans so he'll be no worse off then everyone else.

As previous posters, accommodation outside London varies in price hugely. Choose wisely if she can, some are under 4.5/5k a year and some 10 to 13.
If she is getting the tuition loan she should also get the maintenance one for whatever she will qualify for. Check out Martin Lewis for why this is the case. The loans seem very scary but a medic will earn well so don't panic too much. If she doesn't earn well she won't pay them back.

She should take the loan either way. It makes no sense not to. Read Martin Lewis on this.

My dd is a 2nd year medic outside of London. She gets the minimum loan and we give her £600 per month, which is slightly above the expected parental contribution. This is enough to cover her essential costs. She has a part time job to pay for the nice-to-haves.

Good part time work in London is online tutoring in Maths or STEM subjects for 11+ or GCSEs. Any other languages etc for tutoring. £30 to £60 per hour. Usually after school and before dinner slots and weekends.

Imperial in particular, but also UCL, offer good bursaries. Well worth looking into.

Not all accomodation is 12 months. University accomodation is often let out to tourists during the summer, whilst students in London rent on the private market which, once the Rental Reform Act is passed, will allow tenants to give notice at any point, so no more fixed term tenancies.

Work can be problematic for medical students. They tend to carry on right to the end of the summer term and can have pre-sessional courses/placements as well. (At one point DD who was at Bristol but took her intercalation at Imperial, was in two places at once. Finishing a group project at the first and attending a six week pre-sessional at the second.) Work during term time can be difficult because of placements. The best options are taking HCA shifts (done by plenty and good experience), tutoring, and in London casual hospitality work - lots of events in the run up to Christmas and in the summer.

I am surprised Martin Lewis is mentioned. First he takes an accounting approach and does not factor in preferences and propensities. Many parents, often those who are least well off, get real satisfaction from their DC starting out with as little debt as possible. Second he acknowledges that there are exceptions, and he specifically mentions medicine, where forecast income is high, and whether you are better off not taking the loan.

Your transport figure in London looks high. Many students walk or cycle. Medical schools usually pay for transport to placements.

The NHS bursary is not great but it does cover fees. And because health is devolved not all from outside England will receive it.

Watch out with medicine and pray Wes keeps his promises. After eight years, and despite good results including a strong intercalation and good appraisals, DD has found herself one of the 50% in her year group who are unemployed. All medic jobs are open to worldwide applications, which means ordinary jobs are routinely receive hundreds of applications and new doctors struggle to compete against others who have years of experience. It also means that the locum market is saturated, so in August/early September she only picked up one shift. Things are better now in that she has a month contract in a really interesting and busy job, which she hopes will be renewed, but because of the competition pay is not great. Even Australia is becoming more difficult though DD has just accepted a job starting next August, which opens the door to specialist training over there. Again as a result of the strength of worldwide competition for places, only one in ten of DDs cohort were accepted for training in the UK. The trouble is that gaining UK accreditation for specialist qualifications gained in Australian is a years-long and tortuous process. Sadly unless Wes carries out his promise to give priority to UK medical graduates, the only options for many medical school graduates will be to leave the profession or emigrate.

I didn’t do medicine myself but I did have a flatmate who was a medic. The course workload was very high and with placements etc there was limited opportunity to take on paid work so I wouldn’t rely on DD being able to self-fund once the course starts.

If she takes the Uni fees loan she may as well take the maintenance loan too as it doesn't make a difference, ie. you always pay the same amount back regardless of the loan amount. As a rule, we worked out that you either go all in (take all the loans you qualify too) or not at all if affordable. The only difference is that she may be able to pay it quicker if she aims to pay it I guess.

DD will go to Uni out of London, we saved to pay her accommodation and she will use the maintenance loan to live on. It comes to appx £90/pw over the entire year (more if only split over the Uni term). She will also work over the summer period at home for extra cash. I don't calculate her phone, netflix, spotify as extra expenses as I already pay for those.

On a med course working during term time is unlikely to be possible but jobs in the holidays might be doable.

my DS went to uni in London and we gave him less than that.

that’s a pretty luxurious student lifestyle.

we gave him a total budget for the year and he worked quite hard to find low cost accommodation so he could spend on other things.

Surely medical students should expect to pay the whole loan off. So even though monthly payments may be capped, the less you borrow, the sooner you pay it off.

It matters. Medics in the early stages of their careers, often till they reach consultant in their 40s need to be mobile. F1/F2 placements are now randomly allocated (though you can express preferences). The competition for jobs is such that you take F3 positions wherever you can find them, and ditto with training positions if you are lucky enough to get a training number. There are other pinch points along the way and specialities like GP, where unemployment is a real issue, so you may well have to move for work. This means that many medics miss out on the early steps of the housing ladder. If you are trying to settle down, have children and buy a house in your early to mid 30s, you really don't want to be paying off a loan as well.

I think your figures look very generous. Outside of London we're paying just under £6k for halls. You can't necessarily control this very much as unis set their own prices, but setting her up with an expectation of sharing bathrooms would help. We are just covering halls which are approx the same as the expected parental contribution.

Save the Student's survey has some average student spends which come to £490 per month plus bills and rent, outside London. This includes things like an average of £67 for travel. And a standard maintenance loan of £4900 will cover this, if split over 10 months instead of 12. They'll probably have some figures for London too.

Thank you so much to all who provided comments, it's really good to hear about stuff we haven't even considered. The suggestions on jobs (HCA shifts, tutoring, hospitality, etc.) are very helpful. I hope we can find affordable accommodation and transport options to avoid that maintenance loan. I know it's still 9% you pay back regardless of the loan size, but as some of you mentioned, medics will likely pay off the entire loan eventually, and if we can, why not help her... I would've preferred not to take the tuition loan, but sadly, we can't afford that as we still have mortgages. I've lived in the UK for over 25 years, but grew up in Europe and graduated debt-free.

The England student finance system makes no sense to me and it frightens me - it was a bad political choice, and I'm 100% sure it can be changed if there is political will. Look at countries like Germany or France. Or even Scotland. If they fund universities directly and charge students very low/no tuition fees, I'm sure the rest of the UK could also reform that system. The burden on students is immense, and I doubt it helps social mobility.

@Needmoresleep We know the UK grads' challenges and hope that particular challenge will lessen when DD graduates. The government's plan to increase medical school places without a corresponding increase in training posts, coupled with UKGs competing on training posts with international grads with 10-15 years of experience, is bonkers. If they are training posts, they should not allow those who are overqualified to apply for them.

Daily living £6k?!? What do you anticipate her doing? My DD has budgeted £50/week which is to include everything from food to socialising and society fees and return trip home for the holidays. Even over a full year that’s £2,600. So say you want to be super generous and double that - still less that what you state.

Unfortunately it is not just training places. The real problem is in what is informally known as "F3".

There is already only one training place for every 5 medical school graduates. Though not all will want to, or be capable of becoming consultants, this is nowhere near enough. The problem is made worse by the fact that UK training positions are open to applicants from all over the world, which has generated an arms race in terms of CV enhancements (research, competitions, additional qualifications) with more than 50% of those places going to overseas applicants. So in practice, and from DDs observation, only 1 in 10 F2/F3/F4s got onto training. Many F1s and F2s are simply too busy working to compete with those attending specialist training colleges overseas designed to help students access careers in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Many too will not be sure which speciality they want to go into until they have finished rotations, or be like DD who was always sure she wanted to be a surgeon until she worked in another area which was far more interesting.

Equally bonkers is that health is developed so each UK region has its own contracts for F1/F2s and each Trust has its own policies. Yet allocation is UK wide, so English F1s can and do get allocated to Wales, Scotland or NI. England is on a new (2015?) contract but other parts of the UK are still on the old (2005?) contract. However training decisions are made UK wide. Those on busy rotations and more demanding contracts in hospitals where consultants are too busy to carry out research, need to do just as well and have as many CV enhancements as those who had lightly loaded rotations. No credit is given for performance at F1/F2.

In the past this group would take year long contracts (F3s), perhaps as a Clinical Teaching Fellow (ie teach medical students) or similar, to give them more time prepare for their exams and gain experience in different work areas. Others then might decide they are happy to pursue careers as speciality doctors without trying to climb the career ladder.

This is where the real problem lies. These entry level jobs come with enhanced settlement rights so are very attractive to people overseas who want to raise their families in the UK, even though the jobs are at a lower grade than they are qualified for. Very ordinary jobs routinely get hundreds if not thousands of applicants and vacancies often close within a few hours. UK applicants do not have the same level of support as those applying through overseas agencies so face coming off a night shift to write out applications with very little chance of success. Day after day. One young doctor I met did this for 6 months before he landed a 12 month contract. Whilst a consultant at a London teaching hospital told me that they are frustrated that their very good F3s are repeatedly rejected for training whilst many who they interview who were accepted prove to be unappointable. Their solution has been to set up an in-house training mentoring system to help get get their F3s through so that they can consider them.

The NHS need to fix this bottleneck first as Dds peer group is stuck with no work and no way to pay for rent or food. Figures showed that in about 2023 17% of F2s from DDs deanery left for Australia. The 2025 figure will be significantly higher.

Locuming is equally competitive. The NHS is supposed to be cutting down on the use of locums, but DD is in a hard to recruit area where high-flying trainees or overseas recruits often leave as soon as they find a job elsewhere. Even so there was apparently huge competition for the 4 weeks of work she has now. She was lucky because she spent her F2 in the same hospital in parallel departments and has very strong references, but even so she has no idea whether they will give her a new four week contract when this one ends. Every other SHO she is working with is a locum, though on longer contracts. They are all from overseas, often with quite senior experience.

DD recognises at the moment she is in a stronger position as she has more recent broad experience across different areas of the NHS so can be considered for a wider range of jobs. (Her agency tell her she will have no problems getting shifts once flu season starts.) She also has a better understanding of UK treatment protocols etc and so has a far greater chance of getting through the exams. . The NHS approach to staff is shocking. Where is the morality of disposing of thousands of newly qualified doctors, presumably to buy more experienced doctors from overseas at a cheaper rate. You then offer these doctors nothing in the way of training or career progression, yet expect them to be motivated. Then when you no longer need them
you let their contracts run out, leaving them driving Ubers to make ends meet.

Sorry about the rant. It has been a difficult few months.

It is worth knowing that medicine is a great career but the NHS is an awful employer. The recent Times article about the 10,000 UK educated consultants stuck in Australia because the GMC will not recognise Australian specialist training, even though it is based on our own, is a particularly mad example. So a bonkers position where we have too many doctors yet too few and, for many a choice of leaving the profession or a one way trip to Australia.

On your main point. We paid by being frugal. Both our DC respected that and were frugal themselves. Batch cooking, packed lunches, advance rail or coach fares, joining societies rather than clubbing. There is a huge variation in what students get and what students spend.

Wow @Needmoresleep what a total nightmare! I used to work in the NHS and I agree it is far from being the excellent employer it should be.

I am so sorry about your DD and her cohort. Does she still feel doing med was a good decision – does she still want to progress and do well? I hope so.

Good comment btw about cutting your cloth – the OP’s DD will need to do that too.

Thanks. So much is beyond stupid. It is as if no value is placed on dedicated and hard working young people who have already devoted 8 years to becoming a doctor. And no one seems to care. It is only very very recently that the BMA has allowed Resident Doctors to campaign about training as well as pay. And they are still not really talking about the mad way we are bringing in overseas doctors and their families in large numbers, often from red list countries (ie poor countries who do not have enough doctors) whilst exporting bright young doctors we have spent so much on training.

Lots of small things. DD after four months of trying still have not been able to sign up to NHS bank - the internal agency that is supposed to be saving the NHS from having to use private agencies. The friend of a friend who studied medicine locally but did her F1/F2 elsewhere is not able to locum as she has not been trained in the Deanery's computer system. She can't be trained as she does not have a permanent NHS job, but needs to live at home because she is not working. And and and.

Nurses, midwives and other HCPs are also affected by the opening up of our labour market. In DDs Deanery apparently 90% of last year's newly graduated nurses were without jobs, yet active recruitment in the Philippines continues. (I don't know the detail but understand UK graduate nurses have to be recruited on a certain pay grade. Overseas nurses can be recruited on lower grades, so cheaper.)

It may not matter in London and other major cities, but in rural areas retention of overseas staff is difficult as they will often leave for urban centres as soon as they can, whilst qualified locals have few other sources of work. The very lovely agency guy told my daughter not to worry. August was bad for locum work because people had only just started their jobs. By September they would start leaving. In one department she worked in at F2, they had a 50% vacancy rate amongst their training positions (SHO to senior registrar.) They could only hire those who had been selected for training via the national process, so Consultants were on call one night in four, and so also leaving. Ideally DD would be helping them with audits as they are struggling to get the research done that they need to, and she was sitting at home and needs to bulk up her CV with research, but without a longer term job with the NHS she cannot access patient data.

The NHS may improve, but there are so many problems, so many vested interests, and so little leadership, it is difficult to see how it can.

A decade ago DD's dentist warned her about becoming a doctor. Dentists had just gone through very difficult reforms, and he felt that major upheaval was inevitable for doctors. He was almost certainly right. In early spring we saw a rapid turnaround from a bright enthusiastic doctor with hopes and ambitions to someone who was saying that perhaps medicine was not the right decision. Six months later DD seems to reached the conclusion that she still loves medicine but that the NHS is not somewhere that values its people. The irony is that young doctors from her deanery are apparently really appreciated in Australia who seem to like bags of hands on experience over the conferences and publications that the NHS is looking for.

Advice to OPs DD is to go in with your eyes open, work out what is needed to get onto training and to start early, and to have a Plan B. (DDs intercalation in biomedical engineering and the scope for pursuing this further was DDs fall back.) As it is DD now sees Australia as a way of experiencing medicine in a more functional environment. OPs DD should think seriously about London Universities. There tends to be a higher level of ambition, and the courses tend to have more of an academic focus. One very bizarre thing is that medical courses have been pushed to be more practical and hands on, with the idea that communication and other softer skills are important. But the requirements to get on to speciality training, especially now it is so competitive, are largely academic.

Sorry OP. I hope the ranting was at least a little helpful.

Thanks @Needmoresleep this is quite helpful even though it's a lot to process (and stomach).

DD is keen on Medicine. She's done quite a lot of volunteering work in the NHS and a couple of placements, and she's very motivated to get in. She has also done very well on grades to date and the UCAT test. If she does end up in London, it will be tough financially, and she'll likely need to get the maintenance loan, but we'll support her with the rest, and we hope she can find some work to help with the costs.

Thanks to all for the input. We'll definitely revisit the figures, and yes, I think we inflated them a bit. 😂

@bendixI disagree - the unpaid student loans are now £230 billion! The majority of students have not paid off their loans! This new system means those who earn the most pay off the quickest. That includes doctors. This means they pay less interest - it’s the lower paid people who pay off over 40 years not the best paid! What you pay is based on what you earn, not what you borrow.

I also know £13,000 is fairly high for halls in London. I’d look around a bit more! Many unis have under £8,000 outside London too. Have you done the calcs to see what loan she could get? Would your money be better used for a house deposit at a later date?

@mondaytosundayis your daughter really managing on £50 a week for food and everything else? Where is she? And what is she eating? That seems very low for food AND going out / travel etc

@Needmoresleep I know this probably isn't helpful but loads of locums at Derriford. If Plymouth an option they are earning a good wage this year. Not sure on rules of joining bank though 🫩

medicine is medicine is medicine. There is no advantage to training in london and so if you're on a low income this isn't a great choice.

I have two at university. They each have £500 a month living costs then their rent. We pay their contact lenses, spotify, mobile phone contracts on top of that.

@bendix Why are you so against a loan for a high paying job? Apparently you are on a low income but can afford dd to have no maintenance loan? You must have access to plenty of money to enable this scenario. Most people take the loans and for a high earning career, why not?

I agree. The loan repayment becomes somewhat eyewatering around £100k per year, but even then, is appx £500/pm not worth paying back seeing that the degree was what enabled the person to earn that?

Ultimately, if the parents can pay it then that's their choice but I think a shift in thinking is needed with regards to student loans.