leaving University in first year

Hello SFE team.. I hope you can provide some info and guide.

I am in term 2 of my first year at a university, for personal reasons I want to leave the course and university. My plan is to apply to a different university (same or similar course) for entry in September 2021.

Question 1: Would I have to repay the student loan I have used at current university now? Would this be 2/3 of the loan (as I am planning to leave during term 2), or does this count as a full year loan already used? I have a maintenance loan for university resident accomondation also.

Question 2: Am I still eligible to apply for new student loan for my next university choice? This will be a 3 year BA course starting as a fresher.

Question 3: to fill my time between leaving my current university and starting new degree course (say april 2020 to sept 2021). I am looking to do a one year diploma accredited language course. Can I also apply for Student Loan for this in addition?

Appreciate your advise and guidance. I am a UK Home student.

Hi there,

If you are planning to withdraw from your course you would need to get your university to send over a change of circumstance task to notify us of this change. They do this electronically through a system we share with them, once processed, all future payments will be cancelled and your entitlement will be re-calculated which may result in a loan and/or grant overpayment. In this instance the customer would be contacted by the Student Loans Company's collections department to make arrangements to repay.

If you want to apply for a new course starting 2021, we do take into account previous study you have undertaken. We use the following calculation to work out your entitlement:

Duration of new course + Additional Year - Previous Study = Entitlement


Any remaining entitlement is applied in the final years, therefore is your new course is 3 years and you have previously studied for 1 academic year your calculation would be as follows;

3 + 1 - 1 = 3 years SFE tuition fee entitlement remaining. You will also be eligible to apply for a Maintenance Loan and any Supplementary Grants applicable to you.

In regard to question 3 can you confirm what level the accelerated language course would be you are looking to study and what qualification you would gain from it?

Thanks, Amy

Hello Amy, thanks for the quick reply. So when he applies (hopefully successful ) for new university, which will be by Jan 2021, the university will know of my student loan history already in contact with SFE.

The one year accreditation language course is at the SOAS and it's a graduate diploma in Chinese. It's a full fee course as in about 9,500 a year.

Hi Simon,

The university won't know about your history with Student Finance England. However, once you've made an application for the 21/22 academic year, they'll be able to see these details on our shared system.

About the one year course, is this it here? https://www.soas.ac.uk/languagecentre/languages/chinese/diploma-and-certificate-in-modern-chinese-fulltime.html

Thanks, Graeme