The great 'what I wish I'd known before I was a student' hunt

greenalien_2

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39185/113/

Despite this being an American site, there's some good advice and lots of free software tools, wish I'd had access to this sort of assistance when I went to Uni!

greenalien_2

All universities have notice boards in the student union and in halls of residence. They're an excellent source of info about shared houses and second-hand course books. If you're still at home and haven't yet moved to your new Uni, it's worth checking out any Uni in your local area if you're after cheap books, as they may be the same as you need - and second-year students often move into shared houses a couple of weeks before term starts, they'll often be selling off their first-year books and should be easier to contact.
If your Uni offers a subsidised meal voucher system, usually available only to those living in hall, there may be an 'unofficial market' in these, so if you don't mind refectory food, it can save money and cooking. Typically, such vouchers get much cheaper as the end of term approaches! (Any ex-RHC students will remember 'Boog' vouchers!!)

flyingflea

I have graduated from uni with a 2.1 of which I did very little work and had a really really good time and experience! I don't have any student debt and am very proud of this fact, especially as I spent a year studying and working as an Intern in the States where I earned no money at all. I don't have any secrets, I am just a very money-savvy person. Here are a couple of things I did (from memory), I don't expect anyone to copy all of them but you might find one or two useful.

- I ALWAYS got smashed before I went out. I would only bring with me enough money to cover the club’s entry fee (although this is often free before 11pm) and one drink. Most alcohol is on offer at one point or another at the supermarkets so I just stocked up whenever the big bottles of vodka or Bailey's were £9.99 for example. After a night out, I never bought burgers or kebabs. Instead, I normally had a lush handmade sandwich waiting for me at home which always tasted so much better drunk.
- In my first year I limited myself to going out 2/3 times a week. In my second and third year, just once a week and ALWAYS Mon-Fri (as students nights were usually cheaper). Saturday’s sucked anyway as it was full of locals and the people in bars and clubs are generally older and uglier.
- I made all my own sandwiches! I never ate in uni, the food was disgusting and overpriced.
- I took out the full loan and had a non-repayable grant each year because my parents were on low incomes. I also opened a student account which had the highest free overdraft at the time. I withdrew all of this all and it all went into high interest accounts to avoid the temptation of spending it.
- I worked part-time at a local McDonalds during my first year. I got free food everytime I worked (I usually had a chicken flatbread with a fruit bag and a bottle of water) and got a half decent wage for an 18 year old. In my final year 2nd year I worked a few shifts at a bar.
- The summer before I went to uni I worked as a PA for a friend, the summer of my 2nd year I worked a night shift at a warehouse and the summer before my final year I worked as a delivery driver. This meant that I earned about £4000 before I started uni.
- At the freshers fair, I signed up to everything which gave decent free stuff. Be prepared to give a false name / e-mail etc as you'll get spammed. One year I managed to pick up £40 worth of Wilkinson's vouchers just by walking past over and over. I would have got more but you can only take your jacket off so many times before they started to recognise me lol [IMG]file:///C:/Users/Dave/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif[/IMG]
- I drove to uni in my second year, I would NOT advise doing this! But if you insist, car share and get your friends to chip in for petrol.
- I used cashback sites to earn an extra about £500 a year
- I had a 12 months free cashback deal on a mobile phone, did this every year and sold my mobile afterwards. Always made myself £100 doing this each year.
- I didn't buy ANY uni books unless I found I had to refer to them every week. Even then, I managed to get hold of a book from previous years' students for about a tenner each. They weren't always the current edition but this didn't matter.
- Party and have fun at home, WORK at uni. That definitely worked for me. I could never concentrate at home, too many distractions.

With regards to doing well at uni, I would give the following advice:
- Attend all your classes. Especially during the weeks commencing the revision weeks. Some tutors often drop subtle hints about what will occur in the exam. I loved this one tutor I had in my first year, who wasn’t very subtle at all. During revision week he gave us a sheet of paper with all our work summarised in key chapters. He said, “Highlight these key chapters. Don’t ask why, just do it.”
- Uni isn’t school. You won’t be spoon fed. Like other people have said, you have to extract the information FROM your tutors sometimes. You have to actively work. I didn’t do this but I did attend all my classes so I at least gave the impression I was a good student. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t attend classes when you see how many turn up for the exams.
- Network, network, network. The more mates you have at uni, the fun you’ll have and the easy it will be to work as you’ll learn things that students have picked up from different tutors. Knowing someone who can get you free entry in a club is always good to know, or a mate who works behind the bar who can pour you a double for the price of a single ;-)

Now for the things I did but definitely don't recommend doing:

I did every bit of revision the night before. Cramming kind of worked for me but only because I turned up to all my classes. I did every piece of coursework the night before (always an all-nighter job) and always e-mailed a copy to my Mum to spellcheck it the next morning, bless her! My dissertation, which was 15,000 words long, I wrote in 10 days. I did my research before this and thought I had enough research material but I still found myself the morning of the day that I had to hand it in, I was still finding new papers to write about in my dissertation. I got 60% for my dissertation which I was very surprised to get. There’s no point in wandering in what I could have got if I had put more effort in as I know if I was to do it all again, I know I’d still end up leaving everything to the last minute. I didn’t enjoy it but there was no other way for me. I’m just glad I don’t have to do it all again!! I can’t tell my future employers I am good at managing time but I can say I work well under pressure :-D

irishmist_2

Hi,
It's a while since I left university, but I had a complete ball.
Some things I learned ( or wished I'd known!)
-It's much much easier to spend on an overdraft than it is to pay it back - be strict with yourself and don't let yourself slide into spending it
-Live with people you like and get on with from 2nd year + - I am very good friends still with the people i lived with. If you get on you can have loads of parties, cook together, and so on and have a brilliant time much more cheaply than going out and meeting friends
-We lived centrally each year, which was great fun, but shared bedrooms to do so - have very happy memories
-work! All been said before. One option that was brilliant was that lots of the universities have OTCs or RAF student corps or University Royal Naval Units - you get paid really well for doing some very exciting stuff, meeting good people and there is absolutely no commitment to join when you leave uni.
-I also did care work which paid well (for a student nurse) and would quite often get paid well to do a night shift at someone's house, and only really was there if the person needed something. Wrote loads of essays and so on over those shifts.
-Join clubs esp of things you think you might be interested in whether it's drama or climbing or skiing - so so much cheaper to do at university, and always worth a try to see if you like a new sport etc
-get a bike or walk everywhere
-if you're house sharing set up a joint bank account for all the household bills. Agree to pay a bit over each month what you think you need, with the deal that at the end of the year anything left is split equally or used for an adventure of some sort. This cuts out massively the arguments about so many things and stops you havign to convince people they do need to pay for electricity and so on. We asked the bank to set it up that any withdrawal needed 2 signatures (from 4 of us)
-swop clothes with friends
-Budgeting is boring, but so worth doing it - had I done it I would have done all of the same things, but would have wasted less money doing them, and would have left with no debts
-look at what trips volunteer groups do over the summer or sports clubs do - again it is unlikely you will ever get such great opportunities at that price again (if any as you quite often can fundraise a lot of the money)
Enjoy every minute - it's a really exciting and fantastic time.

elizabethneal

Work out straight away if your lecture notes are available online, and also if you need to sign/tick a register in them. I wasted too many Tuesday mornings going to 'writing skills' lectures which taught me nothing, were 'mandatory' but there was no register!
Online lecture notes are also a fantastic revision tool.

Also, buy a goose down duvet so you don't have to turn the heating on so much in the winter... snuggly!

wisegirl6

When you get a part-time job, try to get one with a large company who will send you on training courses. My son worked for a large American, very well known clothing retailer, and received loads of training, even though he only worked Saturdays and holidays. This experience and training are very valuable on a CV, and will greatly increase your chances of getting a job.

poppy_f1

in my first semester i spent a small fortune on books, then i bought a lot of the books 2nd hand from notices on the board - depending on your course the content doesnt get updated every year, i was doing Law and for some subjects i could get away with 1 year old books
i have books still sitting here 8 years after leaving uni that have never been touched but now they are no good to anyone

work - i worked all the way thru uni, at first in mcdonalds where i worked late on a thurs/fri nights then sat and sundays, i quit there and got a job in a mobile phone shop luckily for me my schedule allowed me to work 1 full day during the week as well as the weekend so i was earning not bad money plus i had a manager who was flexbile with me in giving me time off during exam time but in return i'd work full time hours if needed during the summer and xmas period

i got to uni on the bus for most of my degree it was good time to go over notes before lectures/tutorials

do attend, in my course it was the tutorials that was most important so these were never missed unless i had a really good reason but some lectures could be missed (i had a lecturer who had written a book and most of his lecture notes came from there so in some cases i could miss the lecture as long as i knew what the content was going to be)

drinking - well i never missed out on the social aspect of uni despite living about 20 miles from uni just had to make alternative arrangements for going out which usually meant crashing at a mates place or if it was a special night got a cheapo hotel for the night but its worth it, good networking, not just with people in your year but in other years.

i made use of the gym on campus, it was a bit crowded but it was free so i didnt mind waiting

johncolescarr

When I was at university I was too proud to apply for a student hardship grant for the first 2 years, then did it in the final year and was given over £1000. I found out at this point that lots of my friends did it every year! You'd be surprised who is eligible for the grant, a lot of my friends were not really that hard off. Also, make sure you claim tax back if you have temporary jobs in the holiday. More than likely you are paying PAYE, in which case you are eligible for a rebate. Also, don't forget that tax years run from April to April. If you work an undergraduate placement year you can claim back tax as you are likely to start and finish in August. I claimed back about £600 tax for a job paying £15,000.

mrweeble

johncolescarr wrote: »

Also, make sure you claim tax back if you have temporary jobs in the holiday. More than likely you are paying PAYE, in which case you are eligible for a rebate.

Rather than claiming it back, don't pay it in the first place! That way the money goes in your bank and you earn the interest not HMRC. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxandu/index.htm has lots of info including a link to the form P38S which you need to fill in to stop them taking the tax

Acerfan

Students living out of halls or in shared houses, don't go out and splash your cash on household things such as pots & pans or toasters, have a look on freecycle/cheapcycle first, you'll often find many of the items you need offered for nothing & if usually only a bus trip/drive away. The same goes for clothes, computer equipment , TVs etc.

Plan ahead. If you know you're going somewhere, book early to make sure you can get the cheapest ticket. If you can't book early, be prepared to travel at less sociable times to cut the cost.

Check out the price comparison sites before you make any big buys and look for any discount codes - it's usually cheaper to buy online if you can't get it second hand. I didn't even know about any of these sites while I was at uni & dread to think how much I could have saved.

Don't burn the candle at both ends - it doesn't do you any good. If you can fit in part time work, try to book some time off around your deadlines & exams. That way you won't feel too pressured. And, always take a book with you on the bus or for your breaks while working. It's amazing how much of a difference that extra bit of reading can do.

Always bring your own food & a bottle of drink (preferrably non-alcoholic) to uni. It can be very tempting to buy a sandwich between lectures & if you can't be bothered, just buy a jar/tub of sandwich filler - it's much cheaper than ready made sandwiches & no bother to make.

Above all, keep up to date with your finances. At the first sign of trouble, take stock & see if you can make any savings. If not, then ask for advice from parents, the uni, or CAB.

Finally, keep checking this site for tips, advice & savings