Phil Davis - Student Finance For Dummies

Student Finance For Dummies
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,
www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book, please see our website at www.wiley.com .

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the permission of this publisher.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY : WHILE THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR HAVE USED THEIR BEST EFFORTS IN PREPARING THIS BOOK, THEY MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IT IS SOLD ON THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AND NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. IF PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OR OTHER EXPERT ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL SHOULD BE SOUGHT.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport .

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com . For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com .

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-119-07585-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-07587-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-07586-8 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

If youre looking for an overview of the student finance system in the UK, youve opened the right book! My aim is to give you a sufficient level of detail to inform you of the variety of support available in each of the four nations of the UK through the provision of student loans, grants and other sources of financial support such as educational trusts and charities.

Youll find information about eligibility for support, how and when to apply, how your support is assessed and paid to you and what you need to pay back. My intention is to provide a guide to how the student finance system functions so you can gain a better insight when navigating the system during your studies. I provide you with enough information to understand how student finance should work for you so that you can quickly resolve any difficulties, or identify where to turn to for assistance should any difficulties arise.

The governments student finance system is not perfect in terms of meeting all the needs of all students, and there is a realistic chance that you may need to supplement your student finance with income from other sources. A wide range of options including part-time work, discretionary funding, effective money management and even credit are discussed with the intention of raising your awareness of the various options you have available to you to make your student finance work for you as effectively as it can.

Good luck with your studies!

This book aims to provide you with a realistic representation of how the student finance system operates, to help inform your use of it and hopefully enable you to have an effective and positive experience of it.

Wherever possible, I have taken the opportunity to break information down into easily accessible and identifiable sections, so that you are able to quickly find the topic you wish to read about. Sections are designed to stand alone and to be read in whatever order you find useful, and to dip into on a need-to-know basis.

Some sections may never apply to you during your studies. For instance, some material is subject specific, or concerns regional info or personal circumstances which do not apply to you. Nor should you be concerned with trying to remember all the information contained here the book is intended to act as a quick resource for you to refer to no matter how frequently. Think of it as your friendly guide to understanding the student finance system, always ready to assist you with what you want to know.

The majority of the book uses the student finance system in England as the default version. The reason for this being that the majority of students access the English student finance system. Every effort has been made to signpost the exceptions relevant to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish systems, so you should find the important information you require wherever youre studying, and whichever of the UKs student finance systems youre making an application through.

At the time of writing, the only rates of student finance which have been confirmed for 2016/17 are those for England. The latest information has been used for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but this may change during the months leading up to September 2016/17. The online information supporting the book includes links to the funding websites for each of the nations, so reference to these resources will provide the equivalent rates for 2016/17 once they are released.

You may notice that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending that the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

To help me focus on giving you the information you need, Ive made a few assumptions about the average reader (no, of course youre not one of those average readers, youre in the top percentile ).

The majority of information is relevant to undergraduate students, although some sections target specific postgraduate studies as well.

I dont expect you to have any advanced mathematical skills or in-depth knowledge of financial products in order to use this book as an effective resource. On the contrary, the book aims to simplify the various aspects of student finance so that you can gain a thorough understanding of the various options and entitlements available to you, and to help explain the more complex elements of the system.