£350 less money this year

glider3560

I've just seen my student finance assessment online for the 10/11 academic year.

Compared to the current year, I'll be getting £347.00 less loan and £7.00 less grant.

However, our household income has gone up by just £44.00.

Does anyone know how this works? Surely they couldn't have used a negative rate of inflation as tuition fees have gone up?

Taiko

Grant entitlement seems ok, and I'm also going to assume 10/11 is your final year, which means you're entitled to less anyway.

PasturesNew

It'll probably work out that this year has less days/weeks than the previous ones.

glider3560

Taiko wrote: »

Grant entitlement seems ok, and I'm also going to assume 10/11 is your final year, which means you're entitled to less anyway.

Yes, it will be my final year so I assume that would explain things.

whitfreak

In your final year they seem to assume that you'll be a ("proper") job as soon as you graduate. So the time between graduate and the new academic year isnt covered by the maintainance grant/loan, as you've left...

The logic makes sense in a perfect world but it can be a nasty surprise, and even if you do get on a grad scheme most don't start till September anyway....

Taiko

Actually, it's because in previous years you cannot claim benefits over the summer holidays. Once you graduate, you can claim them as such, and by not giving you the extra it's not double funding you.

glider3560

whitfreak wrote: »

In your final year they seem to assume that you'll be a ("proper") job as soon as you graduate. So the time between graduate and the new academic year isnt covered by the maintainance grant/loan, as you've left...

The logic makes sense in a perfect world but it can be a nasty surprise, and even if you do get on a grad scheme most don't start till September anyway....

Throws open a whole new kettle of fish - what on earth will I do when I graduate?!? My university course seems to be training us up to be university researchers without any thoughts about graduate schemes with commercial companies or any of the clinical jobs that you can do with my degree. 15% of my degree mark comes from the work that I do in a university research lab and 7% from a literature review where I review, guess what, research from university labs!

whitfreak

Taiko wrote: »

Actually, it's because in previous years you cannot claim benefits over the summer holidays. Once you graduate, you can claim them as such, and by not giving you the extra it's not double funding you.

Ah, That makes a lot more sense now. I stand corrected. Thank you.

Glider3560 - No degree is job training. An even the ones that you'd think are require more training after graduating (Law, engineering etc.).

Grad Schemes are interested in transferable skills and an ablitiy to learn. So if you can show organisational, teamworking, leadership skills and so on, it doesnt really matter. I have a chemisty mate and a languages mate go onto the exactly the same Banking grad scheme.... So depending on how you're labs are organised they could be a very good on that front.

MrsManda

glider3560 wrote: »

Throws open a whole new kettle of fish - what on earth will I do when I graduate?!? My university course seems to be training us up to be university researchers without any thoughts about graduate schemes with commercial companies or any of the clinical jobs that you can do with my degree. 15% of my degree mark comes from the work that I do in a university research lab and 7% from a literature review where I review, guess what, research from university labs!

Mine is like that too but your university will have a careers department with lots of opportunities to speak to them about different options. Visit them, look on their website and see what events they've got which you can go to - mine do general events where there are a lot of potential employers who are looking for graduates, then subject/ discipline specific ones where the employers are looking for science degrees or law graduates etc... as well as ones for options for further study.
Also will be likely to run interview practice sessions and assessment centre practise sessions. You can also make an appointment with a careers advisor to go through possible options.
As Whitfreak points out, marketing your degree to potential employers isn't necessarily about the subject but your transferral skills - organisation, computer literacy, independent working, independent thought etc...