I have both old and new student loans.

m-march1

Hi all,

I went to uni in 2009-2011 before dropping out, so I was on the old style of loan (i.e. £3000 fees etc). I then went back to uni in 2012 (the first year of the new style loans, £9000 fees etc). Don't even ask how much debt I'm in...it's obscene! To be honest, I'm not too concerned about the amount though - I wasn't happy at my first uni and I wouldn't have been able to do what I really wanted to do without taking more loans, so to me, the large amount of debt is totally worth it to me.

Anyway, enough background! I've just graduated and am looking for work. Some of the jobs I'm applying for have salaries of over £21000 and I was wondering what would happen with my repayments - are they classed as two separate loans so will I be paying quite a lot?

Also, where it's been 4 years since that first loan, is that 4 years into the 30 years I have to repay it i.e. it's now 26 years before any remaining debt is wiped, or as I was a student again does that somehow not count?

It's so confusing, but I know I can't be the only person in this situation, I couldn't find any information on their website, which I think it pretty appalling.

Thanks in advance for any help/tips!

MataNui

Yes you will. You used to be able to nominate one to pay but that was a long time ago. I have recently been in the same situation as you but have just finished paying off the old style loan.

The deferment levels for each are quite different so you may get away with paying one (with the lower deferment level).

#Edit#
A lot of the old loans have been sold on now so are not being collected by SLC. If yours is one of them (mine was with Erudio) then dont expect any help or sympathy from them.

Ed-1

m-march1 wrote: »

Hi all,

I went to uni in 2009-2011 before dropping out, so I was on the old style of loan (i.e. £3000 fees etc). I then went back to uni in 2012 (the first year of the new style loans, £9000 fees etc). Don't even ask how much debt I'm in...it's obscene! To be honest, I'm not too concerned about the amount though - I wasn't happy at my first uni and I wouldn't have been able to do what I really wanted to do without taking more loans, so to me, the large amount of debt is totally worth it to me.

Anyway, enough background! I've just graduated and am looking for work. Some of the jobs I'm applying for have salaries of over £21000 and I was wondering what would happen with my repayments - are they classed as two separate loans so will I be paying quite a lot?

Also, where it's been 4 years since that first loan, is that 4 years into the 30 years I have to repay it i.e. it's now 26 years before any remaining debt is wiped, or as I was a student again does that somehow not count?

It's so confusing, but I know I can't be the only person in this situation, I couldn't find any information on their website, which I think it pretty appalling.

Thanks in advance for any help/tips!

From what you say, it looks like you studied 2 years of a first degree course starting 2009 and then dropped out. On the 6th April after you dropped out, this loan entered repayment and this loan will be written off 25 years after this date. e.g. if you dropped out June 2011 then the loan entered repayment on 6th April 2012 and will be written off on 6th April 2037.

Your post-2012 loan will be written off 30 years after that enters repayment so if you graduated in say July 2015, any outstanding balance of this loan will be written off 30 years after 6th April 2016 (i.e. 6th April 2046).

Repayments are allocated between the loans as follows: Any repayments from income above the plan 1 repayment threshold (currently £17335) up to and including the plan 2 repayment threshold (currently £21000) will be allocated to your plan 1 (pre-2012) loan. So a maximum of 9% of the difference between the thresholds will be allocated your plan 1 loan. Any repayments above £21000 will be allocated to your plan 2 loan.

See the bottom of this page:

http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk/portal/page?_pageid=93,6678490&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Be aware that the government are proposing that the plan 2 repayment threshold (£21000) be frozen for 5 years. In that case, it may well be that the plan 1 threshold will reach £21000 and in that case there would be a single repayment threshold for all loans. It is as yet unclear how repayments would be allocated between the loans if that happens.

Out of interest, which course did you drop out of and which course did you end up graduating from? Did you receive full funding for your second degree or get the maintenance loan only in your first year? (The rules are that you are entitled to a maintenance loan if you are not studying an equivalent or lower level qualification to one you already have and are entitled to a tuition fee loan/maintenance grant for the length of your course + 1 year - any years of previous study except in cases where you didn't complete a year because of compelling personal reasons. Applying this formula to you would mean you were entitled 3 + 1 - 2 = 2 years of full funding for your new course which would be applied backwards from your final year so would mean you'd only be eligible for a maintenance loan for the first year of the new course - was that the case?).

MataNui wrote: »

Yes you will. You used to be able to nominate one to pay but that was a long time ago. I have recently been in the same situation as you but have just finished paying off the old style loan.

The deferment levels for each are quite different so you may get away with paying one (with the lower deferment level).

#Edit#
A lot of the old loans have been sold on now so are not being collected by SLC. If yours is one of them (mine was with Erudio) then dont expect any help or sympathy from them.

The OP has an Income Contingent Repayment Plan 1 loan (i.e. post-1998, pre-2012) and an Income Contingent Repayment Plan 2 loan (post-2012). They do not have a Mortgage-Style loan (pre-1998) which you are referring to. No Income Contingent loans have as yet been sold off to the private sector.

m-march1

Thank you so much for sharing this information! This is much better than I thought it would be - I imagined the payments would be a lot more. Thank you also for clearing up when the first (and second) loan will expire.

I dropped out after two full years at the University of Hull, studying British Politics and Legislative Studies. Basically when I was doing my A Levels, my parents put a lot of pressure on me to do a 'traditional' subject. I figured my life would be easier if I went along with that and did for two years. When I finally grew a pair, I dropped out, took a year out to work and reapplied to study Creative Music Technology at the University of Surrey (which ironically for my parents is a 'better' university in terms of the rankings), which is what my degree is in.

When I dropped out, I phoned Student Finance to inform them of this and spoke to someone who told me that I would have no problem getting student loan for a further three years. When I applied and was accepted for the loan, I was eligible for the maintenance but not for the tuition fees loan. Due to my parents' income I was only ever eligible for the basic rate of the maintenance, no grants etc for all 5 years I studied.

Basically Student Finance wouldn't give me a loan for the first year of tuition fees but would pay for the second and third years of the course. For some reason this doesn't apply to maintenance (and thank god it didn't otherwise it would have been completely impossible for me to go!) As I'd already had two years of funding, they wanted to make sure I wouldn't drop out again. I had suspected something like this would happen when I dropped out but was annoyed that the person I spoke to didn't tell me - I could have used the year off to save (I spent all my money and have nothing to show for it apart from a really good DVD collection and a nice guitar *facepalm*), rather than finding out with just a couple of months to go and therefore not being able to save much. Fortunately my parents agreed to help me with rest of the money and I think we're all in agreement now that it was the right thing for me to do.

So my finance looks like:
2009 - 2010: £3225 tuition loan + basic maintenance loan
2010 - 2011: £3290 tuition loan + basic maintenance loan
2011 - 2012: Not studying.
2012 - 2013: Basic maintenance loan only (£9000 tuition fees paid by me)
2013 - 2014: £9000 tuition loan + basic maintenance loan
2014 - 2015: £9000 tuition loan + basic maintenance loan

Hope that's clear!