Thread 15 - Corona Cohort Year 12, 2021 Lateral Flow & Driving Tests

[orangecinnamon]

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Ds1 is at UEA. As I've said before it's not far away (40 mins) we aren't very good to commute to here in east anglia, trains always seem to be into London then back out again, I'm not sure it's that east to go north by train from here either.

Had a quick look on UCAS but couldn’t see the deadline for conservatoires. It was 1st October in 2020 so assume it will be the same this year? DD ruled out London (too expensive) and Scotland (too far) so left with 4, discounted one after an online open day. So that leaves 3 - Royal welsh (Cardiff) & Royal northern (Manchester) & Leeds. Hope to travel to them if only to do a self tour of the area between now and the deadline.

Is student finance different for wales? Or because she’s from England you apply to England?

I think I understand the healthcare funding better now! Students studying at English unis (even if from Wales) can get the £5k. Students (from anywhere in the U.K.) studying in Wales can either get the normal loan from their home student finance - or commit to working in Wales for two years and get fees paid, £1k per year plus a reduced loan (which is only £2500 for English students). Pro is very little debt. But it will cost us a lot more!

@crazycrofter I thought the maintenance loan was the same in Wales for English students, but Welsh students are funded differently (more generously, the English get the worst deal!)

The whole of East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Humberside is really bad for trainlines. Bizarre routes and bonkers train changes to get anywhere. Huge excitement cause by one direct fast train a day from London to Lincoln last year. Otherwise, it's three train changes on the East Coast line. Cambridge is hard to get to as well unless one goes via London. Which adds cost and plentiful book reading time.

@Monkey2001i think it’s different for healthcare degrees though - at least it seemed pretty clear from Swansea’s website that if you want to opt into the Welsh bursary you also have to take their student loan?

@crazycrofter it looks like it is more separate from SFE than I realised, but if you commit to working in Wales for 2 years you get:
3 years of fees at £9k pa
3 years of non means tested bursary of £1k pa
Can apply for means tested bursary up to £4,491 pa
Non means tested maintenance loan for English students £2,534 pa

So that is £30k non means tested bursary for fees/maintenance, £13.5k means tested bursary and £7.5k non means tested loan over the 3 years.

It is great to get bursaries instead of loans, would be lovely to graduate with just £7.5k of loan. Looks very like the NHS funding available for 5th/6th year of medicine.

Seems unfair that the Welsh students can borrow £4,675 compared to £2,534 for the English ones, but as I said before, the English always pay the most!

I found an odd thing with insurance yesterday. Did a search on confused.com for our old Skoda Octavia with me, DH and DS1 and got a quote of £313 from Lloyd's for a full year. Then went to the quote, added DS2 on and the quote went down to £259 - why?!! Was thinking I was going to be paying up to £60/month for each of them, but this was a negligible extra cost.

@Monkey2001 my friend had a similar experience. She thought she should take her uni daughter (who’s passed her test) off her insurance, but she found it was cheaper to include her (plus both parents and learner sister). So not quite the same situation as yours but it still seemed weird that adding a young, inexperienced driver reduced the cost!

That is weird with the insurance Monkey . I passed on the point you made about getting the test done even if you don’t use it for insurance purposes to DS, he is having a think so thanks for that.

Crazycrofter, I see what you mean with the finance, difficult decision. DD and friends are in no hurry to leave Cardiff and looking at doing postgrad there in most cases to delay leaving so they would say 2 years in Wales no hardship but I guess it would be competitive to get a job actually in Cardiff as everyone will want to.

We now have College’s UCAS deadlines on the calendar and I am aware of the existence of TMUA which I had never heard of. Advice was focus on what suits you, eg one student hated exams so has found a degree which is all course work based and now doing really well. Have a few things to discuss with DS.

Yes, I imagine staying in Cardiff would be fine, but she might have to work in some remote part of mid Wales. Or worse, she might be disadvantaged by not speaking Welsh and find she can’t get a job in Wales and she’d have to pay the fees back! I really don’t know whether to discourage her from Cardiff, although she’s always been keen on the city.

@Monkey2001

I found an odd thing with insurance yesterday. Did a search on confused.com for our old Skoda Octavia with me, DH and DS1 and got a quote of £313 from Lloyd's for a full year. Then went to the quote, added DS2 on and the quote went down to £259 - why?!! Was thinking I was going to be paying up to £60/month for each of them, but this was a negligible extra cost.

Insurance is very weird. A few years back, I got an insurance quote from Sheila's Wheels who were meant to be all about insuring women drivers because we were less of a risk. DH and I have always got insured on each others cars so I amended the quote to add him and it dropped my quote by about £100. He also had speeding points on his licence vs my clean licence. Explain that!

I have registered DS for a real life open day at Notts.

I can see that CrazyCrofter. Think on balance I might be tempted to steer towards an English university in your situation, but tricky.

On insurance, maybe a family of 4 has a low risk profile, or could be that if there is one learner plus parents, it looks like the car is mainly for that 1 learner, but with 2 learners it looks like a family car.

The lesson is to try lots of combinations of people who won't actually be driving when getting quotes!

You could look at current vacancies in Cardiff, or ask the dept how many of the most recent graduates were unable to get a job in Cardiff. The reason they started the scheme was because people were drifting out of Wales after qualifying - Scotland has been increasing medicine places for Scottish students for the same reason.

It says on the Swansea website that you can choose to be funded under the English funding scheme, so it would be worth checking that you still get the £5k bursary if you have not gone for the Welsh NHS bursary.

It seems pretty clear on the NHS site that the £5k bursary is only for English universities. For Dd, it will be all about the place, the vibe, the people etc, so I just hope she takes to a few other universities!

I went on the Trainline site yesterday and realised what an absolute nightmare it is to get to Norwich!!

@crazycrofter

I went on the Trainline site yesterday and realised what an absolute nightmare it is to get to Norwich!!

Are coaches an option. They used to be quite good I'm not sure even where the National Express goes now !

I've got that song in my head now!!

DS is now thinking about applying for Computer Science. Anyone with any knowledge as to where would be good.

National express does go to Norwich. But I think from London. So may as well get the train if that's the case.

@sansou I have not looked into CS, but I did notice that at both St Andrews and Cambridge it is one of the most competitive courses, so if that is true across the board, it may be necessary to be strategic in choices.

🚨 we now have exam dates for DS. We have been informed that these are serious and will be used for UCAS predicted grades. I still feel this is harsh considering their lack of exam experience. I need to start cracking the whip.

In good news I have booked my second vaccination, hopefully I won’t be as sick as last time.

I had my second jab yesterday. So far so good, because last time I felt horrendous for 3 days, and took a week to fully recover (AZ). Hopefully you'll be OK.