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Loans and grants - getting less than you expected
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
im enquiring here because my neice whos studying at chester university was expecting £1000 grant and tuition fees paid, and a loan of £4000.
When she checked her account, there was only £3070 and thats supposed to be for a year. She said that doesnt even cover her rent in halls, and if she didnt have some savings, she wouldnt even be able to eat.
Surely this cant be right? I suggested appealing against the decision, but she said, shes been told the chances of success with an appeal are low, and she would have to pay for the reassessment, which she can ill afford.
I suggested her looking for a job, which she is going to do, but her course dont recommend students taking more than 10 hours work a week, but I dont see how shes going to manage to do this.
Is there any advice anyone could give me that I could pass on to her. I feel really worried about her. Shes such a sensible girl, shes a christian, doesnt go out drinking etc, saves money, so if she cant do it, I cant see how the hell anyone could unless theyve got rich parents, which she hasnt.
When she checked her account, there was only £3070 and thats supposed to be for a year. She said that doesnt even cover her rent in halls, and if she didnt have some savings, she wouldnt even be able to eat.
Surely this cant be right? I suggested appealing against the decision, but she said, shes been told the chances of success with an appeal are low, and she would have to pay for the reassessment, which she can ill afford.
I suggested her looking for a job, which she is going to do, but her course dont recommend students taking more than 10 hours work a week, but I dont see how shes going to manage to do this.
Is there any advice anyone could give me that I could pass on to her. I feel really worried about her. Shes such a sensible girl, shes a christian, doesnt go out drinking etc, saves money, so if she cant do it, I cant see how the hell anyone could unless theyve got rich parents, which she hasnt.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
Post edited by JustV on
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Comments
i think £3070 is the max non-means tested loan you can have outside of london.
if you are means tested, you may get a little more and part or all of your tuition fees paid, if you qualify for extra support (single parent families, low income, etc, etc).
not sure why she would be getting a grant, unless she's studying something like nursing or teaching
my max loan was something like £1200 a year. i didn't bother.
Why was she was expecting the extra cash?
She needs to speak to her LEA and ask.
Bopz
Maybe she`d just been misinformed and 3070 is just the amount shes going to get.
Hopefully it is just an installment as bopperz said, but im not sure.
It would just be such a shame for her ot not be able to do it because of money.
And yeah, it isn't enough.
But if her, or her parents, has ever voted Labour then I have no sympathy.
It is a sad fact though that you are expected to pay a lot of your way at uni; my dad has an income of over £30,000 but my mum is at uni and they have my little sister to look after and the mortgage to pay off, so they don't really just have money lying around to give me. The loan doesn't even cover all my accomodation, I think they just expect you to pull your tuition fees out of thin air half the time.
You're expected to give shitloads of money to Blair the Corrupt's banking chums. I owe NatWest £3500 from my degree, plus another £10,000 to the Government.
Bargain.
I got the full loan last year, and even that doesn't cover Durham University's accomodation charges.
Blair is a cunt, and anyone who has ever voted for new Labour voted for this. And they deserve it.
Or she may have to get a job like the rest of us. Shock horror.
Blair needs to die.
Makes you think what your prospects are at Uni - getting a degree but at what cost?
Everyone I know managed. In my first year I got just short of £4000 and that paid my fees, my accomodation (catered) and for my 'life'. My parents gave me nothing. I managed. How come others can't?
Hers wont cover her accomodation, let alone anything else. I think she should appeal, but she thinks that it wouldnt work.
It just makes me think that no wonder some people do really stupid things to try and pay their way through university.
I think she should too as it sounds to me, given her circumstances that she filled the forms in incorrectly. Perhaps she didn't apply for the means tested extra she is entitled too?
the point i wanna make is this: hasnt the maximum amount us studes receive gone down? i get the top whack, (single parent, low income family) and i got £4095. last year im absolutely positive i got nearly £4300. now seeing as inflation hasnt decreased any time in the past, ooh let see, er...never, why has the amount we have to live off gone down?
Well bully for you :thumb:
Remind me again how much your fees were? £100?
I didn't. Hence why I owe over three grand to fucking NatWest.
But then again, according to Blair my parents had loads of money to give me. God I hope that al Qaeda get their hands on him.
First year they were £350, second year they were about £600 because my dad did loads of overtime, so no, they weren't £100 at all.
According to the guidelines my parents also had a lot of money to give me, which was bollocks, but being bitter is just a complete waste of time imo. I knew how much it would cost before I went to uni, I knew how much debt it would put me in and I still chose to go.
And your attitude might be 'bully for you' but my attitude is 'boo fucking hoo' to people who moan about the cost of studying, because it has never been something, even when I was studying full time, that I disagreed with.
But then again, I never expected my parents to pay for anything more than the basics - they pay for a roof over my head and food on my plate. That's all they pay for while I'm at home too.
So I work, part time in a nice little job in a nice store, just 12 hours a week but it gives me the money for the things *I* am responsible for buying, like clothes, nights out, cinema tickets, makeup etc. I don't expect my parents to pay for those things when I'm at home, why should they while I'm at Uni? I've always had to work for the little extras in life, and I've always enjoyed it.
I think the point is they are now £1,150 per year so people can't just "get by" on the £3000 loan like you would have been able to. If most people had an extra £600 stuck in their pockets every year then they might do just fine, but things are very different to a lot of students now than they were for you.
There aren't many people that disagree with the fact that studying does cost money and that it should come from somewhere, its just the fact that you aren't allowed to get a loan in the first place to cover the cost of everything, which just doesn't make much sense. A lot of students would prefer to take on a bigger loan for themselves than for it to fall on their parents to pay things for them, but we aren't given the option which is what is most irritating.
fees have increased, but loan amounts have also increased. in my first year (2000) the max loan i could have had was about £2150. that was the non-means tested one. this year it's £3070.
max tuition fees in my first year were £1050, this year they're £1150.
the other thing that annoys me is that you will be judged according to your parent's income, irrespective of whether they actually bestow any of their income on you. there are people like me, who are really lucky, and their parents will help them out as much as they can. but then i knew people whose parents earned over the threshold, so they had to pay max fees and got minimum loan, but they never saw a penny of their parents' money.
but they managed. everyone did.
a bigger loan might seem attractive when you're studying, but when you start work, and you realise that you'll be paying off that debt for 15 years, it's not quite as great.
Another person from Kent who speaks the truth. Well done.
I only left in 2003, how can things be that different? To be honest I'm not sure I even understand what you're saying in the paragraph I quoted. In my second year I paid £600 of my fees, my accomodation fees and for my life out of my loan. If I can do it other people can.
If you had four thousand pounds as you said, and you only had to pay £600 in fees, then that leaves you £3400. Even if your accommodation costs were £2000-£2500, then that still leaves you with at least a thousand pounds to live on throughout the year.
Which is probably why you managed perfectly well on the loan, but most students nowdays simply can't get by on just the loan because it doesn't even cover accommodation and the fees, let alone anything else.
I agree with you that we should pay for these things, but as I said before its ridiculous that you don't even have the option to take out a bigger loan - which is obviously needed, because not everyones parent's can afford to pay the extra and not everyone wants their parents to. We are adults responsible for our own lives now, we can have children, buy houses etc etc, so surely we shouldn't have to rely on mummy and daddy to cover the costs of uni?
Most of the people that sanctimoniously harp on about how well they managed etc. didn't have a "life".
Absolutely.
that's why we all had jobs, tbh.
no, we didn't. we couldn't afford to. unless you count walking to the nearest pub to have a couple of lemonades and steal the sachets of ketchup.