Is anyone else’s DC opting for the most expensive “premium” halls?

[badboss2020]

We have submitted the application for DD to go into halls. For various reasons she has applied for the most expensive premium en suite type of halls. There are a lot of this type of room so I assume a lot of people do go for them, but now she’s paranoid that she’s going to be seen as rich/posh/tory (whatever that actually means!).
There is always a lot of talk about the cheapest options at various unis but the other end doesn’t get mentioned much.
We aren’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, it’s only for a year so we felt like she should have a chance in the nicest environment?!

DD's halls are almost £10,000. Six young women in an apartment in a purpose built block. They have a concierge service and cleaner (cleaner does shared spaces) once a week.
It's also en-suite with a double bed. The biggest plus is there are no travel costs because it is literally a two minute walk to lectures and ten minutes into the city centre. I wish she'd stay there for the whole time if I'm honest, but she signed a lease on a house for second year before Christmas.

Mine was fussy about room set up (needed a big desk without shelves over the top) and his was £220 a week. En suite, six rooms sharing a kitchen and sitting area. Turned out that they had all had a gap year, range of backgrounds, all got on pretty well and socialised together (and this was allegedly ‘Tory Towers’).

The cheapest accommodation was £147 a week, which was where I’d stayed 40 years previously - we were 5 bedrooms sharing a kitchen, bathroom and toilet, although they now seem to be flats of 4 so must have upgraded the shared facilities. Most of the old halls from my day have been rebuilt to cater for what students now want - no shared rooms, en suites, self catering - which comes at a cost. No hall bars though, which is where we did our first year socialising.

I don't know about bath but if he has a special need to have an ensuite (letter supported by specialist or dr) I know exeter can reduce room by quite a bit.I think a few unis have this so worth asking bath too.

In some uni accimodatuon , you find the most expensive accomodation is used primarily by international students ,often chinease when my son was at uni. She may want to consider this from a socialising aspect. Dd is at uni in mid level accomodation, one bathroom between 2 and her housemates are all normal!

thank you, yes he does have a medical condition that I think was the start of all the toilet/school drama so that may be worth a shout. He's waiting to hear about last choice so isn't firming up yet but both Bath and Exeter he is already registered on their extenuating circumstances so hopefully that will help with getting him allocated an ensuite in due course.

It might be worth checking reviews. The students at unis I’ve lectured at sometimes have issues in the newer halls, particularly the private ones. There is often very little pastoral care or opportunity to meet others beyond the flat they live in. I’d choose a traditional catered hall every time, ideally with an active residents’ association or JCR. The key thing about halls is finding your tribe, which can be hard in a flat set-up.

International students don't have 2 heads, you know ? 😉

I think access to the kitchen is key otherwise it's a bit isolating.

I have had 2 at uni, first one wanted an en-suite room because when they are nervous they get an upset stomach and wanted their own toilet with immediate access if they were in the flat. Plus covid restrictions so wanted a clean non-shared bathroom. Then they went into private halls just off campus and again en-suite. Second one did the same, en-suite in first year, private halls just off campus. Different universities.

The second one shared with international students in first year which can be problematic because they talk to each other in their native language. However, they were from all over so it wasn't one domestic and 7 international students from China.

Graduated in 2023 and for mt first year at pompey i did mid level halls, my friend paid for her halls out of finance as it covered it in full plus left her extra. Same for me but i worked all through uni (got a 1st) so my situ was different.

Yep compleatly aware international students are normal people dd currently shares with 3. From diffrent countries and its great. DS experiance was if students were international and from similar ethnicity they tened to scoialise together and exclude other students, especially if the same language is spoken as mentioned by another poster.Very understandable but can be isolating if you are one of only one or 2 who dont speak the language.

There is quite a lot of anxiety about sharing a bathroom with strangers, which is why a lot of young students favour the en suite accommodation. Fortunately, my DS was not bothered and DD, who started saying she needed an en suite for above reason, discovered which were the party halls and made a bee line for that, even tho' it was shared bathrooms and very basic.

It makes a massive difference to have your own bathroom so for that alone you can afford it, I definitely would do so.

DD more than happy to hang out with international students so that’s ok.
I remember hearing about Tory Towers at Birmingham haha.
Thanks for the insight. I’m happy with our choice. To be honest the cost is horrific but whether it’s £8k or £9k isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the camels back 😖

DS had a number of international students on his halls and many of them stuck together if they had a common language (understandable)

It's the case with my dd that the international students don't mix. Luckily she has a mixture, she wasn't bothered about the bathroom bc she said she 'shares one at home'.

I knew what @jamimmi meant. The students my dc’s friend lived with were all Chinese fwiw. They spoke own language in kitchen. They were wealthy and jetted off every weekend to Europe so no one around. They cooked a flat meal for Chinese new year and didn’t invite her which I thought was very mean. Poor girl was paying a fortune 51 week contract and over £250 a week.
In contrast the cheaper uni owned accommodation was more mixed demographics although the uni en-suite halls definitely had more internationals.
The shared bathroom thing is personal preference. The bathroom at my dc’s flat was separate with a locked door it’s not communal showers. It was just outside her door and due to layout only 1 other person used it. She had a large vanity sink in room.

We didn't have a choice. DD applied for cheaper halls, but they were so oversubscribed that she could only get a place in halls that ate up pretty much all her maintenance loan (she's eligible for just under the full amount). We're covering food, travel & phone from savings.

It's a stretch. Next year will be even more expensive. 😩. This is in Bristol, btw.

DD is struggling with anxiety and has worked really hard to get into a very good Uni. Her anxiety gets worse in certain circumstances. She rarely asks for anything and is very good with money. With that in mind we want to ensure she has a successful, positive experience so we are encouraging her to apply for ensuite catered halls. We've saved for this for a while and I don't understand the approach where students somehow have to suffer just to appreciate good things. She is extremely grateful for this and overall modest and not an entitled person.

Of course, we do know that not everyone can afford this. I don't get why I should feel guilty for being able to afford it, DD has a friend who's parents are covering all the costs (fees, halls, food), we can't afford to cover the fees as well but I don't expect them to apologise to me for having more spare cash.

The main issue will be that she may well be living with/socialising with flatmates who have got a lot of spare cash! In my (and DC’s) experience, those who lived in the posh halls (Tory Towers!) had loads of money to go out (often had come from public schools), so you might find yourself struggling to keep up financially. Groups went skiing at Xmas and Easter together as well for example.
I think it’s pretty sound advice to select halls with people who will probably have with a similar budget to you!

I'd agree with this. We told DD that we'd give her £1000 per month to cover everything other than her phone and if she chose expensive accommodation she'd have less to live on foodwise etc. She chose shared bathrooms/kitchen for around £5700 per year and so gets about £500 a month to live on. Obviously everyone in her flat has chosen cheap accommodation so they all go and shop together in ALDI, go into town every couple of weeks to Spoons and generally try to live cheaply.

By contrast, a friend's DS is in a more expensive city and chose to live in private uni accommodation with an ensuite. Him and all his flatmates thought nothing of getting takeaways every day and ordering an Uber if they were late for their 9 o'clocks. I think all the parents paid for the expensive accommodation and their kids were given the minimum loans to live on. Inevitably they didn't budget and would ring their parents to get top ups. As my friend said, it was still cheaper than the private school fees they'd been paying for the last 10 years!

I think my DD would have loved not to be sharing toilets with the boys because of their hygiene standards (😱) but on balance she thinks the lower cost was worth it because she can easily afford her deposit for next year and build up some savings.

I don’t think anyone is saying you should feel guilty tho? I am certainly not saying that, tho I am a big advocate of considering accommodation costs when looking at unis, as they can vary hugely (and a lot of parents and YP do not realise). Each to their own tho obvs. Some people will have saved large sums, for others £10k catered hall fees will seem cheap compared to what they were paying for private school (as I see @Sweetpeasaremadeforbees also says!). That's all fine.

I encouraged my DC to consider cheaper accommodation as with two of them at uni at the same time and a lowish HH income (tho still over the threshold for the min loan tho) I felt (and they agreed) that ££ could be better used than on an en-suite shower room. That's fine too I think.

Looking for places with cheaper halls and private rentals can put a move to a uni away from home within the reach of less well-off families, which I am sure we would all agree is important. At somewhere like Nottingham, where all on-campus halls are catered, is effectively out of reach of a student on max loan (who presumably will have no extra parental support) as the loan will only just cover the hall fees in some cases. I know btw that there are SC halls not far off campus and some on-campus catered halls that cost less than others. Still it’s a concern, and for some cities (looking at you alma mater) a huge number of the halls and private accomm is around £10k upwards – which again, is all the max loan.

One uni I went to on Open Day said that eventually all their halls will be en suite (so they can charge more but she didn't sat that)

That’s the one 😂.

We just tried to aim for halls which would probably have other kids with similar spending money so they could socialise together. This worked really well.

My colleague’s DD went to really expensive halls and felt so out of it, as her flatmates were eating out all the time, going for expensive cocktails, getting cabs to nice places and planning holidays abroad at Easter. She moved halls after a couple of months which was much better. If you’ve got £350 a month spending money, living with people with £700 a month it’s not much fun.

Ha my DD applied to Durham (where she attends). Of course it has a reputation of white privately educated students, which tends to put many off. My DD is privately educated and is white. She thought ‘hey I’ll fit right in’ (or course this isn’t true and people are not homogeneous no matter what their background). But she’s not just frugal but tight and next year decided she could walk 40 minutes to class if it meant cheap rent, and on top decided to take the smallest single in the house as it was £5/week cheaper.
Your daughter should rest easy. The oriole she shares with will quite likely be similar to her in some respects by the fact they are attending the same uni, but affording a certain type of accommodation is not a personality trait.

Apologies I should have mentioned I only read up to page 2 and someone mentioned "in our days we went to the cheapest halls and lived on very little which is why we appreciate what we have now" (paraphrasing).

It is a bit of a sensitive subject on my side as DH, who received no help from his parents, subscribed initially to this view as well (students should struggle because we did in our time) so it took some time to bring him to my way of reasoning.

Agreed on looking for what is available for everyone's pocket. We did explain to DD that if she decided to go to London she will not be in the same fortunate position, as we allocated a specific budget for this so £10k buys her ensuite catered halls in the Midlands, not in London and that was our yearly budget.

Yes, she will be mixing with those who can afford to spend a lot on going out and clothes. If she won't be able to keep up it may make her feel isolated. This was the case with my niece and itnaffected her badly, she was at Bristol Vet school. Can she still change her preference?