Realistic costs of uni

[dontwanttobefatandforty]

Can you give me the realistic opinion of what the costs for dd going to uni. I have done the government calculator and she will get £7000 in loans and grants. She wants to move away which will mean accomadation will need paying for. How much am I looking at needing to subsidise her, I have dh telling her she needs to stay local to keep costs down. Best uni for her course that she wants is 4hrs away.

there is tonnes of info here & there was another one - but I've lost it! (sorry)

In addition to what katymac has said if you look on the accommodation page for the university you mentioned you will be able to see how much it costs. It does vary between universities. In addition to the government loans and grants many universities give additional bursaries for low income families. If you stay at home the loan is less.
Plus many student get jobs. Mine both have had jobs and always work in the summer holidays. It does though depend on the area as some are very hard to get jobs in and also some courses have a 9 to 5 lecture programme, so less hours to work.

Dh reckons our dses have about £100 a week, over and above their rental costs - to pay for food, books, fun, transport costs. This may be a bit generous, and they could maybe manage on a bit less.

Accommodation costs will vary, but ours have paid between £4,500 and £6,250, with en suite university halls being the most expensive, on a 40 week rental, and a shared house, with three others, on a 52 week rental being cheapest. You can pay less for halls - ds3 was looking at Aberdeen, where the cheapest halls are £90pw.

It is worth watching how many weeks you have to book the accommodation for - it does vary, and if you have to rent for longer, this will bump up the cost, even if the weekly rental looks lower.

Unite halls of residence can be quite pricy if you book them directly, but cheaper if you book early, via the university, in our experience.

We are looking at:

£9000 fees on loan
£5000 accommodation for 40 weeks which we are paying
£3500 maintenance money on loan which daughter has to live off of
£3000 scholarship to spend on the two overseas trips arranged for year 1 and books etc

Should be do-able if she doesn't go out drinking a stupid amount. She has worked full time for most of this summer so has earned £2500, so she has that as a back up but doesn't want to spend it unless it is necessary.

Am watching with interest as DS2 hoping to go to uni next year. I had been thinking about £75-100 on top of accommodation costs but I've seen some threads which talk about students surviving on £20 a week for food! I give him that for his lunch every week at school!

Food probably can be very cheap but if we can afford it, I would rather give my daughter a bit more money and she buy fruit, veg/salad and recognisable meat/fish.

She has just made a carbonara for practice with Aldi bought ingredients and the cheapest dried spaghetti at 20p/packet. I reckon it still cost £1 to make (mainly the eggs/cheese/ham). She is doing it with a bit of milk not cream to save on fat.

Never, ever, advise a young person to stay local to keep your costs down! Your job as a parent is to ensure she gets the best education she can and support her with her choice of course, especially if she wishes to aim for the best one.

All but the poorest parents have had to make a contribution towards university education down the years and now is no different. Our DD1 got the minimum maintenance loan, which nearly paid for her catered accommodation and we gave roughly £100 a week on top. As your DD has £7000, I think you should see what accommodation her choice of university has to offer and what the costs are. Self catered will look cheaper but may not be much cheaper unless students are very organised over cooking, ordering food as a group and not going out all the time to avoid cooking.

If, however, this course is in London, you need to be aware costs there are stonking! Way more than anywhere else due to housing costs. Our DD2 got minimum loan and that was £3,600 short of the rent for the self catered hall. Everything else was down to us. If that is the case, you need to speak to the university about any additional funding they may be able to provide, such as bursaries.

If she's getting £7000 then she'll be quids in.
IME people I know get loans of about £3500. That might just touch the accom. or quite possibly won't cover it, and then you have food etc on top, but you won't need to top up someone getting £7K unless they have a very extravagant living style.

You would have to top up in London though, Backforgood. We don't know where the OPs's DD wants to go to university.

shared room at kings in london is £3,650 a year

milly - not necessarily! The loan is substantially (almost £2k) higher for students in London, and as carol says, shared rooms are much, much cheaper and quite prevalent in London - and whilst I can't imagine much worse than sharing a room, it does make a more affordable option.

dontwant, I managed uni with very little subsidising at all (also about 4hrs from home) - my parents weren't really in a position to sub me money and I got a bit of a kick out of scrimping and saving and being independent, as did lots of my friends. It wasn't easy (especially as whilst my parents were over the threshold for me to get anything but the minimum loan, I'm one of 4 kids so there wasn't a lot of spare cash at all), but I worked full-time every holiday and got the maximum overdraft I could, so my bank balance on day 1 of term was always around £0, by the end of term was -£max-overdraft, and then working over the holiday brought me back up to £0... and so on. In my second year I worked part time for the university so that gave me a little extra spending money.

Where is it that she's hoping to go? Costs do vary a lot across the country, I was lucky that where I went (Birmingham) wasn't too unreasonable. I'm now doing post-grad in Oxford, which is a fair bit more expensive BUT the university's much better at supporting its students when they're in need (same with Cambridge IME). Most university's now have quite good resources online to estimate costs, do have a look at the relevant ones for your DD.

I hope that's vaguely reassuring - I think it's wonderful that you're researching it for your DD and would strongly recommend having a quiet word with your DH - he may think he's being helpful encouraging her to be 'realistic' about costs but encouraging her to stay near home is a massive mistake imo. She should go to the place that she wants to and is best for her course, and she can afford to do that without your support if she has to. She might have to make a few sacrifices (shopping at Aldi, walking rather than bus, library instead of buying books etc) but it'll be worth it to go where she wants and where the course is best. And if you can afford to throw a few quid her way every now and again, that's a bonus!

Oh, and I think I'd recommend budgeting for some nice treats rather than an 'allowance' if you can afford it - in my experience (and that of aaaalll my friends) is that you barely notice an extra £30 a week, whereas things like a trip to ikea before she goes, a student railcard so that she can afford to come home for you to do her washing every few weeks (I'm only half joking!), fieldtrips when they crop up (it's so shit being the one that has to stay for the half-hearted trip around Bourneville when everybody with £££ on your course buggers off to Berlin ) etc etc all make a huge difference. And if you're not budgeting for an actual allowance for her, it'd be more achievable to help out in an emergency if need be (eg. if her laptop explodes etc).

I pay my daughter £70 per week for food, going out etc. My dad gives (£70 per month pocket money (and always has done) of £70 per month which she views as clothes money. Her maintenance loan of about £4500 more than covers her accommodation plus bills - last year (in halls) only by a few hundred but this year (in private rental) by about £1000. She is in uni of Birmingham where accommodation isn't too high. She or I pay books, depending on if I can afford to give her more money. She has about £4000 savings but never needs to touch it.

What are the likely accommodation costs - this is the starting point .

In our experience, the accommodation costs can vary tremendously, even at one university. Some halls are really cheap - if a student is prepared to share a bathroom, share with another student, or live further out from the centre of campus. Bigger rooms, en suite rooms cost more.

As I said earlier, you also need to look at the length of tenancy - a slightly cheaper room with a longer tenancy can work out more expensive - which is fine if the student needs to be there all that time, but a waste if they don't.

The earlier a student can apply, the more choice they will get. We were lucky that both ds1 and ds2 had unconditional offers, so were able to book their accommodation for their first years early, and so got plenty of choice.

This year, however, ds2 had decided to share a privately rented flat with some friends, but that fell through, and he had to try to find a place in halls at fairly short notice - and he has ended up paying more. He is in a beautiful room though - it is in the attic of a building right by the Royal Mile, and he has views over the monument in Princes Street Gardens and Arthur's Seat from the windows at each end of the room, and lots of space. It is definitely worth the money, but if he'd been able to apply earlier, he could have got a much cheaper room.

Faints!

I shall be topping up DS maintenance loan a bit this year ( he's in fully catered halls and the loan doesn't even cover 100% of this! ) but also paying DD1s rent at the very least as she is doing an MA (has fee funding not maintenance).

Shame they aren't willing to live together ( same uni) as it'd honestly be cheaper to buy a house.

Blimey, theas - if I were being that generous I'm not sure I'd ask them if they were willing to live together, I'd be tempted to tell them that if they want my support they'll be taking it in the form of a shared house!

My DD's university in London had no shared rooms, as far as I recall. Some rooms were cheaper but would have incurred massive travelling costs, so swings and roundabouts!

The London loan for 13/14 was a shade under £5,000. It is not £2000 more than the standard minimum loan. Not sure what DD is getting this year, but usually the loan decreases, not increases. If Kings do a cheaper shared room they must be heavily subsided. Our cheapest option was £ thousands above that!!! None were catered. There is clearly a difference between the London universities which makes it even more important to think about which university in London but UAL is very, very expensive.

quite a few option sless than £6k at UAL

Thanks everyone, she is really liking Edinburgh and Westminster, I'm thinking she is trying to get as far from home as she can! I am expecting high costs in these two cities,

Ds2 has just started his second year at Edinburgh and loves it there, dontwanttobe. If your dd has any questions, I could pass them on to him, if you like.

caroldecker. There is no cheap accommodation for UAL - LCF Lime Grove. I have just checked again. The cheaper options are miles away - the other side of London in fact. The travelling times are enormous and expensive if you live in Camberwell but need to be in West London. Each hall of residence says which colleges are nearest. If Lime Grove is not mentioned, it is because it is not a hall recommended for Lime Grove students. Shared rooms at Camberwell are not recommended for Lime Grove students.

I was just trying to suggest that it is worth checking all this out before young people decide on a university if cash it tight. It just makes sense to do the homework.