How expensive is it & do I have a chance?

How expensive is it to live in London? The website says the MINIMUM living fees are like £10,000 :X. I come from a working class family and would be the first to go to university and I don't think I'd get any financial help from my family. However, I calculated under current circumstances I'd be eligible for around £11000 a year (OMG epic debt :o:

) and I would be willing to get a job too, are jobs relatively easy to get?

I'd be applying for physics with theoretical physics. The A-levels I'm taking are Maths, Further Maths and Physics, Predicted A*AA* respectively. My AS results were AAAB (maths, physics, chemistry and computing respectively). However at GCSE I only got an A in Maths and Physics :frown:

. I never did any revision for them and didn't care about GCSEs at the time. How slim would my chances be? Is London a fun place to live? It looks like it.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 1

alterbridge06

If you'd be getting £11000 that would be enough. This year I'm getting a total of £13000 (from SLC and Imperial) and although I've been assigned one of the more expensive rooms it will be enough.

If you apply for the cheaper halls of residence then you wouldn't have to use all of the £11000 for sure.

Imperial College London

London

Reply 2

ily_em

If you're entitled to 11,000 that's not just loan. I'm getting around £11,000 as my household income is below all the minimums and around £5,500 is maintenance loan, the other £5,500 maintenance grant and bursary from UCL. Assuming your income is the lowest they allow (i.e below £25,000) you will get:

£5,474.50 maintenance lon (pay this back)
£2,906 maintenance grant (get to keep it all)
£3,500 bursary from ICL http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/registry/studentfinancialsupport/studysupportbursaries
(this is every year btw)

More than enough to live on. You will probably find that most unis outside of London (other than Oxford and Cambridge which have awesome bursaries) do not give as much, more like £1,000ish. So going to ICL my actually be cheaper for you if you take the bursary into account :biggrin:

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 3

sunspoon

Webbykun

. I never did any revision for them and didn't care about GCSEs at the time. How slim would my chances be? Is London a fun place to live? It looks like it.

If you're going to get around £11000 in loans/grants that'll be easily enough to live on and still have a good couple of nights out every week as long as you go to the right places.

Make sure that when you apply for student finance if you get an offer here you check the box that says 'let my university know my details' or something to that effect... then you'll get the bursary from Imperial.

As for whether or not you'll have a chance of getting an offer in the first place - the only thing you can do is apply. Your teachers think you can get the grades necessary because they've given you those predicted marks.

I'd like to point out the same thing that ily_em above me has just posted - any bursary money is not-repayable, its only the loans you need to give back - so you only have to pay back

£5474.50 (maintenance loan)
minus £2906 (maintenance grant)
plus £3225 (tuition fees)
equals £5793.5 per year you're here. :smile:

Choose price over whether you get a single room or not and you should be fine. At least for the first year. There's always people looking for really cheap accommodation that you can share a flat with in later years.

Reply 4

trumpetboy101

Are you suitable and able to go? Who cares, just try anyway!

Reply 5

Tomoallen

Don't worry so much about the debt. The employment rate after graduation for Imperial is the highest of any UK uni. Plus starting salaries are really high. £20k of debt for a world class degree isn't bad. Although, it's good to do some saving before uni! Why go to a worse uni and get a similar amount of debt? Just go for it if your capable.