Help with the uni fees

stuartw101 · 11 April 2005 at 1:31PM

How do i go about sorting out the finance for when i go to uni in september? My mum gets benefits so would i only have to pay a certain amount?

Sorry i dont really know much about it, i know i should.

Thanks

Eliza252 · 11 April 2005 at 2:22PM

The best thing to do would be to get into contact with your university who will have staff specifically to help students with fee enquiries. The most likely outcome is that you wont have to pay any fees if your mum is on benefits. There is a bit of paperwork that will need to be done, but you have done the right thing and started the ball rolling well in advance!
While your sorting out the issue of fees you may as well find out if there are any hardship funds etc.
Call the uni and ask for the student finance department.
If you dont know which uni you are going to yet, you can still phone and make it a prospective enquiry, they wont mind.

- with regards to sorting out 'finance' - do you mean specifically paying fees or working out a budget to live on in general?

stuartw101 · 11 April 2005 at 2:40PM

paying fees, im gonna email the uni and ask them a few questions.

thanks for the help

student100 · 11 April 2005 at 2:51PM

You need to get an application form for student support from your LEA (Local Education Authority) and fill it in. This should be done in the next few weeks.

Your school/college etc. should be able to give you the forms, or otherwise contact your LEA directly and ask (they're usually very helpful).

There's lots of information on this site:
http://www.aimhigher.ac.uk/student_finance

and also http://www.dfes.gov.uk/studentsupport/

If you want contact details for your LEA, look here:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/studentsupport/students/lea_lea_contact_det.shtml

pavlovs_dog · 11 April 2005 at 3:17PM

if you go on the studentfinancedirect.co.uk site (the new name for the student loan company), they have a calculator on there, where they ask you some questions about your circumstances, and with this info they give you an estimate of how much you may be entitled to, if that is any use to you.

i found it particularly useful knowing early on how much support i was likely to get, so i could deduct my guestimate rent for the year, so i could figure out how much i would have to live on each week.

sorry if this is stating the obvious here, but when you come home from uni in the hols (assuming you will be staying at your mum's), to the best of my knowledge she wont be able to claim benefit to 'keep you' in the way she may currently get child benefit etc or whatever for you. so it maybe worth your while budgeting for the 52 weeks of the year rather than the 30-40 week academic year, because you may find that you'll have to help your mum out financially if she is to be able to afford to have you living with her when you come home

hope that helps

stuwilky · 11 April 2005 at 5:46PM

pavlovs_dog wrote:

if you go on the studentfinancedirect.co.uk site (the new name for the student loan company), )

Or a totally different quango organisation......

pavlovs_dog · 11 April 2005 at 8:25PM

....?

thats what i was told in their propaganda! dont shoot the messenger :P

pavlovs_dog · 11 April 2005 at 9:13PM

stuartw101 - i've PM'd you

(sorry its more like a dissertation than a pm, just spent 10mins editing it so it would fit in one pm :oops: lol!

stuwilky · 11 April 2005 at 10:22PM

stuartw101 wrote:

How do i go about sorting out the finance for when i go to uni in september? My mum gets benefits so would i only have to pay a certain amount?

Sorry i dont really know much about it, i know i should.

Thanks

Stuart,

Unless your mums household income exceeds £20k per year, which is unlikely, you will not have to pay tuition fees and will receive the full loan amount of around £4100.

Can I recommend rining you local LEA Student Support office to get the application forms, they are fairly lengthly and as your mum is on benefits they require some completion by the department which pay the benefits (which can take some time), the whole process takes a month or two at best so best apply sooner rather than later to get it all sorted before you go.

Savvy_Sue · 13 April 2005 at 12:13AM

My DS has brought home a big fat envelope of forms. I said I thought we could fill them in online, and he said the school had advised against that in an assembly last term. I asked why, and he wasn't sure, but thought some people had applied online last year and run into problems. BUT the booklet says you can apply online from April 2005, suggesting it hasn't been possible to apply online before this year, so is he getting confused? And does anyone have an experience of problems applying online if it did start before this year?

I know the result was a bit of a fiasco for many people, but I LIKED applying for my tax credits online: it was easy to see if you'd missed anything, because the computer would tell you if you'd missed a question or section you needed to fill in.

stuwilky · 13 April 2005 at 7:12AM

Sue the only problems that people would have experienced last year was the fact that they couldnt do it!! There was supposed to be a facility but for whatever reason it was never launched properly!

What i would recommend is that you either complete the paper form first as an aid, or print each page on the online form as you go. Just in case there are any problems with the online facility.

Help with the uni fees

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free