re-applying for uni after quitting?? Finance?

daws0n89

Hello,
I started an engineering degree this year and realised the maths was way over my head considering i had left school at 14 and i have not had to use proper maths for 9 years. This along with other things confirmed my decision to quit before i got into too much debt and complete a GCSE maths course this year (which is free)

I am finally getting a grasp of algebra and other mathematical skills and feel that i will have a much better understanding of the course and would like to re-apply for next year. I received £2400 of student loans/grants and i have been sent a bill of £800 for my grant which i assume i have to pay back because of leaving early which is fair enough.

If i re-apply and gain a place at uni will i still be able to claim student loan/Grant to fund my studies? any help would be fantastic !

agrinnall

I expect others with more expertise will be along soon but my understanding from what I've read on here is that you are entitled to 4 years of funding, so as long as your course is 3 years the fact that you've already had 1 year shouldn't stop you getting funding for the full duration. I'm not sure what happens if the course is actually 4 years, as many engineering degrees were in my day (don't know if that's still the case).

Ed-1

daws0n89 wrote: »

Hello,
I started an engineering degree this year and realised the maths was way over my head considering i had left school at 14 and i have not had to use proper maths for 9 years. This along with other things confirmed my decision to quit before i got into too much debt and complete a GCSE maths course this year (which is free)

I am finally getting a grasp of algebra and other mathematical skills and feel that i will have a much better understanding of the course and would like to re-apply for next year. I received £2400 of student loans/grants and i have been sent a bill of £800 for my grant which i assume i have to pay back because of leaving early which is fair enough.

If i re-apply and gain a place at uni will i still be able to claim student loan/Grant to fund my studies? any help would be fantastic !

There's no fixed limit to the number of years you are eligible for student finance. The general policy position is that you will be permitted student finance for the full length of a first degree course, however many years it lasts. If you have previous study and have achieved a qualification you will not be allowed further funding (with some exceptions such as Medicine and initial teacher training). If you didn't achieve a qualification (such as in your case) the formula used to determine how many years you are entitled to funding on your new course is:

Length (no. of years) of new course + 1 year - no. of years previous study.

Any partial years previous study is counted as 1 full year and if the number of years funding the above formula gives is less than the length of the new course, the funding is applied starting from the final year (e.g. if the length of the new course is 3 years and you've had 2 years previous study then you'll normally be entitled to 3+1-2=2 years funding which will be applied backwards from the final year, so the first year will not be funded).

However, Student Finance England have discretion to award more years' funding in cases of Compelling Personal Circumstances.

If you've only had 1 previous year's study then you'll be entitled to full funding for the full length of a new course.

daws0n89

That is great thank you for your help I now feel that i can continue towards my career! just considering if i should do my A level Maths before i apply. Is it correct that I have received a bill of £800 from student finance?

Ed-1

daws0n89 wrote: »

That is great thank you for your help I now feel that i can continue towards my career! just considering if i should do my A level Maths before i apply. Is it correct that I have received a bill of £800 from student finance?

Depends how confident you are that you'll be able to understand the maths involved in the degree based on your previous exposure to it. What do the uni recommend as pre-requisite courses?

With regards to the £800 you have to repay to student finance - the regulations state that you will be required to repay any part of a maintenance loan or grant that has been paid to you for the time in an academic year that you were not registered on the course. An academic year runs from 1st September to 31st August so to work out how much of your funding you are entitled to keep you need to divide the amount of funding by 365 (days in a year) and then multiply what you get by the number of days you were on your course (i.e. 1st September -> the day you officially withdrew). The remainder is what needs to be paid back. If you are continuing study on a different course, Student Finance can deduct any amount you have been over payed from your new entitlement after it has been assessed. Otherwise you need to arrange a payment schedule to pay it back immediately.

agrinnall

daws0n89 wrote: »

That is great thank you for your help I now feel that i can continue towards my career! just considering if i should do my A level Maths before i apply.

I'm actually quite surprised that you were originally allowed entry to an engineering course with no maths qualification at all, given how key it is to the subject. Certainly in my undergraduate days (late 1970s) I'm sure that everyone I knew doing any sort of engineering had at the very least a good GCSE (O-level then) and the vast majority would have had an A-level in maths, and I'm not sure why that requirement would have changed since then. So if you have the opportunity to do the A-level I think it's very likely to make at least your first year at university considerably easier, although it's possible that if requirements have been relaxed then the university will run modules to bring people up to the necessary level in maths.

VanyaHargreeves

I have to say that I think you will seriously, seriously struggle without a maths A-Level. I have a maths A-Level and even with that, I am baffled by my housemate's first year engineering work. You will have to be very familiar with integration, volumes of revolution, logarithms and similar that you'll only get to at Core 3 and Core 4 of a maths A-Level. GCSE doesn't even touch on the stuff you'll need.

fishybusiness

Ditto....

You'll need more than GCSE maths to drop in at degree level.

I found it difficult enough from HNC to Open University maths in the 'old days'......