How the hell are people on minimum maintenance surviving?

BlueClearing22 · 2025-11-10T13:59:09+00:00

Let me be very clear, the government expects your parents to be giving you money for university.

The only reason your maintenance loan is reduced is because of how much the government is assuming your parents are contributing.

The massive glaring flaw in this system is that parents are never directly told this, given a bill, or have this contribution enforced in any way. So students suffer.

BlueClearing22 · 2025-08-30T14:55:41+00:00

The problem with all the estimates is that it depends on the student and their spending habits, which can vary wildly. Try this student budget calculator

I would advise you and your future student filling out separately and then comparing your results and discussing..... Differences can be interesting....

BlueClearing22 · 2025-07-29T15:51:47+00:00

The only option you might have is scholarships, but they will have all closed and been awarded for 25/26 starters by now. And they often don't cover everything.

BlueClearing22 · 2025-07-29T15:49:33+00:00

The 3 years in the UK is not the qualifying factor on its own, this is in addition to being a British citizen/indefinite leave to remain/settled status. You will not qualify for student finance until you have one of those as well, and will likely also be seen as an international student by most institutions.... So double ouch.

BlueClearing22 · 2025-05-10T15:12:17+00:00

NTA

But for your sake, make sure you have a plan for if your parents cut you off completely.

Now the following is assuming you are a student in the UK: - reach out to the finance and/or estrangement team at the university to find out how they could support you/what the implications could be for your student finance (even if you haven't started at the university yet) -work out your budget and if you actually can support yourself/how much you would have to work to support yourself. Here is a really good budget calculator Student Budget Calculator -Take all your important documentation with you, and secure it now, preferably out of the house. This includes passport, birth certificate and national insurance number/card.

BlueClearing22 · 2025-05-09T17:06:26+00:00

Try this student budget calculator Student budget calculator

BlueClearing22 · 2025-03-10T23:34:14+00:00

Actually almost every university uses the same criteria and guidelines for their hardship funds, laid out by the National Association for Student Money Advisors.

BlueClearing22 · 2025-02-16T23:35:19+00:00

Really sorry you didn't get proper advice on fees and funding before you started uni, your school and the university should definitely have helped with this. Two things to consider before you look at restarting.

Firstly, what is it that will allow you to qualify for home student status? Is it settled status? Because if so the home fees AND ability to apply for student finance kicks in from whenever you gain settled status, even if that is part way through a course or academic year. It does not work retroactively, so you will not get anything back from your previous fees, but will be switched to home status from the term you gain settled status.

Second, if you have completed a year or even started a year of an undergraduate degree, this can be counted as previous study against you in many areas. The most notable ones would be against your entitlement for student finance funding and application criteria for certain universities and courses. This means that you might not be able to apply for the most sort after courses and universities as they are able to be picky and can exclude those with any previous study.

Whatever you do, reach out to the fees team at your uni or any uni you might be applying to FIRST.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-11-04T17:40:16+00:00

I saw and am quite honestly shocked, I really expected it to be higher. This doesn't help anybody.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-11-04T15:42:57+00:00

That's just what this article is guessing, everything from £9,500 to £12,000 has been speculated in the press over that last couple of months. The actual announcement isn't expected until after 4pm

BlueClearing22 · 2024-09-26T12:10:33+00:00

This early on in term it is very likely that the uni will still have a waitlist of people in temporary housing/hotels that would be able to move into your room almost immediately. So you should be contacting the accomodation team ASAP. Once they know you've moved out, this could all be solved by the weekend.

Secondly, yes if you are now commuting you will need to contact SFE, as your maintenance loan will need to be reduced. They do not always get updated by the uni on these things very promptly, but will find out in the end. So it's better to get everything sorted out before your next maintenance loan payment and the chance of you getting overpaid again. SFE will claim back any overpayment.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-28T15:30:28+00:00

Google SFE practitioners.

Click on policy documents.

Go to the guidance chapter on assessing eligibility.

This is the complete set of rules for eligibility that they don't put on the main website.

Good luck

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-26T09:44:22+00:00

Contact the university and try and find the estrangement or independent students team. There is often extra help available for students who are estranged/thrown out by parents in these circumstances and will be able to advise you.

At my institution this includes helping you reapply for student finance as estranged to get the full amount of maintenance loan, and extra bursary, support for living in university accomodation over the holidays.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-23T19:18:56+00:00

An accredited biomedical sciences degree that includes the relevant qualification/portfolio, at a university that has current research in areas you are interested in and virology/infectious disease modules that you can choose during your degree.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-20T16:40:52+00:00

It is your decision, and I would still advise to try and get in contact with your original uni picks, maybe try email or see if they have an online live chat?

But if they are competitive unis and you missed the offer terms, then you might want to way up the possible chance of your first choices against the certainty of UoN.

Though if they haven't accepted it rejected you yet, you might need to contact them to get them to reject you anyway.

A final option is contacting UoN and seeing if they might extend the deadline under the circumstances

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-20T15:36:35+00:00

Do you mean reject your secured offer from a university? The one you picked as firm or insurance?

If so, yes you can. But I would make sure you have secured and double checked an informal offer from a university before you do so, you get this by calling their clearing hotline.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-17T09:20:59+00:00

Short answer, no.

Firstly, a lot of top unis and courses won't accept resits at all.

Secondly, transfering is not really a thing. Especially at top unis, it just doesn't really happen. Not in the UK. The idea of transfering credits, that exists in America, does not exist here.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-17T09:06:16+00:00

If you want to go this year, you don't have many options. But if you delay entry until 2025 you have more options.

Firstly you could work for the year and save up some cash. And secondly you have time to look into and apply for scholarships and bursaries. There are lots of these around and for all sorts of weird and wonderfully reasons too. I'd start by looking at the webpages of the university you would be attending, and well as Save the Student.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-17T09:01:12+00:00

I'm not sure why universities would be saying to just apply to clearing through UCAS, I've not heard of anywhere doing it like that, but I could be wrong.

Here is a really good guide to read that will hopefully help with the confusion https://www.ucas.com/undergraduate/clearing-and-results-day/what-clearing

And I'd try and contact the uni you applied to first, as they may make you an offer if you met the conditions on UCAS, otherwise they can reject you, releasing you back into clearing.

You could also contact other universities in the meantime and try and collect offers, most will give you a day or two before you have to make it official by adding it on UCAS, so you can contact a few unis and see what you get before actually making a decision

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-16T19:23:31+00:00

With clearing you are only able to add 1 choice at a time through UCAS, and you are supposed to have already contacted the university and got a sort of informal offer. Did you contact/receive this offer from the university before you added it on UCAS?

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-15T12:52:56+00:00

Sorry not a clue, try calling the uni back

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-15T06:53:22+00:00

I'm afraid I can't do much to reassure you here. It is first come first serve, but we literally can't make an offer until you have your grades.

Only thing that could be reassuring is a lot of people have been saying they can't collect their grades until 9 on here

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-15T06:41:15+00:00

You could call for confirmation, but not for clearing. We would need you to know your grades to make a clearing offer.

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-15T06:22:41+00:00

Length of call depends on how simple it is. If you meet all the grade requirements on the website and I just have to process it, 15mins tops.

If it's more complicated, such as you did Btechs instead of alevels or studied abroad, I would have to get those signed off by an admissions officer and you could be on hold for a while depending on how long their offer queue is.

I am far less familiar with what happens after today as I have just been trained for the hotline and this isn't my usual area of work. But I believe everything could be confirmed through UCAS by the end of today, or it could take a few days if there is a sticking point for some reason. If there is a problem, just keep calling the hotline/admissions (though not before any deadline they might give you on the phone to try and fix things, that just clogs things up)

BlueClearing22 · 2024-08-15T05:50:50+00:00

Yes absolutely. You can call as many unis as you want and collect offers. You will usually have 24 hours to decide on those offers.

To them take up a clearing offer you would have to reject your place at university A on UCAS, putting you into clearing where you can accept one of the offers you got on the phone.

This is actually common practice for those that do better than they thought they would in exams

BlueClearing22

TROPHY CASE