Oxbridge Finances?

Not necessarily more expensive than other unis.
Most people apply for tuition loan and a maintenance loan. Maintenance loan is usually £4600 outside of London but it may be higher for you due to your household income. On top of that you'd be eligible for a bursary, which you wouldn't have to pay back.

You could check what you're eligible for here:
https://www.gov.uk/student-finance-calculator

Looking at your ECs - are you applying for med?

Oxford has quite generous bursaries: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-funding/oxford-support?wssl=1

I assume that Cambridge will be the same.

Your full tuition fees will be paid by a student loan, repayable over many years (not by your parents), so only living costs need to be paid by you/parents

HeY!

So I’m currently in Sixth Form and want to go oxbridge but was wondering whether it was actually possible (financially)... My household’s yearly income is probably about £16,000 and I’d be the first person attending Uni. I live in the UK (5 hours away from Oxford/ Cambridge)

As for my grades, they should be fine for oxbridge (GCSE: 799998888 , A-level predictions: A*A*A*)

and as for extracurricular, I’ve done the following
(Dr.Kershaws Hospice Volunteering, Dementia Care Home Volunteering (+ a MOOC on Dementia), Charity Shop Barnadoes work, Imperial University MOOC, Manchester Access Programme, Social Mobility Foundation etc, Hospital Work Experience, Senior Maths Challenge etc.)

How much would it cost for a dorm, and are there any other expenses other than the £9000 per year? I’ve always thought about Oxbridge - I’m just scared as to how I’ll be able to pay for it. I’m not prepared to put my parents under financial stress.

Thanks for the support, honestly appreciate it.

I hope so! I’m not so sure whether I’ll get in - ( I’m sure there’s students out there who got all 9s in GCSEs etc).

Thank you for the link! Really re-assuring, and I rlly didn’t know this existed. Puts the pressure of finance off a bit.


Thank you for this! I’ve heard student loan is a pain, but as long as my parents aren’t forced to give everything they have, it’s all okay.

How much would the living costs be? Is there a link you could possible give? Sorry for being a pain

Thanks again!

Apart from the above excellent advice, it's worth understanding that student loans are not "debt" in the sense that any other debt may be considered. They don't affect your credit score, and you will never have bailiffs knocking down your door looking for repayments provided you aren't actively trying to evade them (such as by moving to another country to work and not telling them ).

What happens when you graduate is, when you find a job, you tick a box when you start indicating that you have student loans and they match your PAYE with your student loans. Then if you are earning over the threshold, a small percentage of your monthly paycheque gets deducted and goes towards these - like your NI contributions or income tax. If you don't pay off your loan by the time you graduate or earn under the threshold for a given number of years (not 100% certain this is still the case, although it was when I was first getting SFE loans), the loan is written off.

It is essentially "invisible" debt - it's there, possibly for a long time, but it shouldn't make a difference in your day to day life, because the only time you will be repaying your student loan is when you are earning over the threshold, and the amount you pay back over that is quite small. The months where I work enough hours to go over the threshold I normally only pay back about £20. If you were paying back more each month, it would be because you are earning a lot more and so would easily be able to afford it anyway!

So the £9000 tuition fees will be covered in full by a tuition fee loan, and you will be able to get up to £8900 (rising with inflation each year) as a maintenance loan to help pay for accommodation, food, etc. I think the more expensive colleges tend to end up around £6k a year for rent and food costs, with some having cheaper room options or just more heavily subsidizing rent costs and so being less than that. You will then still have a good chunk leftover to pay for e.g. travel from/to home in vacations and potentially e.g. personal computing equipment, books, stationery etc. As above on top of that both Cambridge and Oxford offer bursaries of various forms (very generous ones as well). Cambridge gives a lump sum each year while Oxford I believe discounts tuition fees and gives a smaller lump sum for maintenance/other purposes, to my knowledge.

Honestly the only "pain" involved in SFE is having to call them if you need to check something the hold periods can be very long at peak times!

Cambridge has a Bursary is you household income qualifies (below £43k)
https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/cambridgebursary

A £16k income qualifies for the maximum bursary (£3,500 pa). In addition you might get some support from your college. Cambridge really doesn't want income to be factor for UK students.

The student loan is not a "pain" - you would get the tuition loan (paid to your uni direct) and full maintenance loan (about £9k pa paid to you) on top of the bursary.

Cambridge (and Oxford) living costs can be lower than other universities due to the short terms and therefore short rental contracts. In particular, some colleges don't charge during the Christmas/Easter vacations but that also means you have to remove all your belongings so they can re-use the room for corporate events, etc.

Here's a cost of living calculator for Cambridge.
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/fees-and-finance/living-costs

Ox living costs: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/fees-funding/living-costs?wssl=1

For medicine, it does not matter too much where you go. The course structure varies between Med Schools, so make sure that this is right for you before deciding where to go.

With a household income that low, the combination of student loans and bursaries means you will be swimming in cash. I've not done research but you can expect to get something like £8.5k from student loans and something like £5k from Oxford per year. If we say your accommodation is £4k, as is a reasonable guess, you would have £1500 per month, or £400 per week, to spend on what you like (assuming you don't save any money for the holidays between terms). Ridiculous numbers, I'm sure you'd agree.

The complication here comes if you are doing medicine - funding will get much more complicated in the final two years and most students get a dramatic drop in loan amount as you switch from normal student loans to an NHS bursary/student loan mix. Income from Oxford might also dry up. So make sure you save as much as you can.



Its of note that those estimates are very safe estimates. You can easily live on 66% of the minimum there, as long as you're not at the most expensive colleges. If you actually tried you could probably get under half.

I know this thread is a little old now, but it's worth adding that any UK resident student starting their first undergraduate degree at Oxford with a household income of less than £27,500 is automatically entitled to a Crankstart Scholarship; if your annual household income is £16,000, you *should* be entitled to around £4,200 each year. (A little more info here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-funding/crankstart/prospective-students). The flip side is you'd be asked to complete 25 hours of voluntary work, but this can be fun things like working at outreach events.

If, for whatever reason, you didn't accept the Crankstart scholarship, you can also apply for a slightly smaller Oxford Bursary. You'd also qualify for an Oxford Travel Supplement; Crankstart/bursary recipients automatically receive this. If you live 80 - 150 miles away, it's about annual £200; any more than that, it's an annual £500. It's also worth checking what scholarships (if any) are available to you - there's lots of opportunities, dependent on subject, college and other factors.

(These figures are definitely all correct now, and don't look likely to change before the next admissions cycle).

Hope this helps!

Y’all are amazing

Wow, thank you for this! I didn’t realise it’d be this low for me (was expecting maybe £1k off?) And yes, will deffo ensure I save up. The accommodation figures are much much lower too! I think I’ll just go for the cheapest one so I have the most money for the final few years. Thanks!

Again, this is so helpful - i haven’t heard of the scholarship until now, and really don’t mind the volunteering aspect. And yep, I’ll check out other scholarships which best suits my field of study and situation.

Y’all are amazing