 Hello, and welcome to this video about student finance. This video is suitable for all prospective undergraduate UK students who are considering applying to student finance. My name's Dan, and I work at Soash University of London. And in this video, I'll be talking to you about a variety of different topics surrounding student finance. I'll look at what student finance is, then talk about the tuition loan and the maintenance loan. We'll then talk about student budgets, and then look at repayments. And I'll leave you with some further information and important links that you can look at afterwards. It's important to note that the information in this video is focused on student finance England. There are differences for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and they all have their own student finance awarding body. I'll leave the links for these on the end slide. So if you do need to look at one of these systems, you can find the information. As well as this, there's a variety of eligibility criteria surrounding student finance and who can apply. For most people, applying for their first undergraduate degree, they shouldn't have a problem. However, I'm not going to go through all of the eligibility criteria right now. So it's important that you double check you are eligible to apply. There's a link there, the student finance who qualifies link. You can visit that, and that has the full list of eligibility criteria. I'll also leave that on the end slide for you if you want to take it down. So moving on to the term student finance. Really, student finance is the money that you need to be able to go to university, and this can be split into two main parts. The first is money that you borrow to pay your tuition fees, and this is the tuition fee loan, and that's paid directly to the university. The other part is the maintenance loan, which is designed to cover your living costs, and that's money that's paid to you. We'll start with the tuition fee. Tuition fees in the UK can be up to 9,250 pounds per year, so that's the maximum amount that a university can charge, and you'll find that most universities in the UK do charge that amount. The money that you can borrow to pay the tuition fees is set at a standard rate, and it's designed to cover the total of the tuition fee. You do have to apply for this each year that you're attending university, but whenever you make that application, it's always to cover the full amount of the tuition fee. This isn't means tested, so it doesn't mean the certain criteria you have to meet to be eligible to apply for it. Everyone who wants to is able to apply for the tuition fee loan. The money that's provided to cover the cost of the fees is paid directly to the university. This is beneficial as it means you don't have to worry about receiving the money and then having to pay the university. It all kind of happens automatically between the student finance company and the university. And the reason the student finance company know to pay the university is when you're making your application, you list the university and course that you're going to be studying. Now for many people, they might be in a position where they don't have 100% confirmation or certainty of the university that they'll be attending. And that's absolutely okay. In this scenario, you just need to list the university that you're most likely to attend. And then if later on down the line, this changes and you end up going somewhere else, you just need to log into the student finance portal and update your details on there. It is really important to make sure you update the details so there aren't any issues with your student finance, but that's only if there's a change. The next part of student finance is called the maintenance loan. This is designed to cover your living costs whilst you're at university. This is typically paid to you in three termly installments at the start of each term, but to be able to receive the first payment, once you arrive at university, you need to make sure that you register with them. This is often a process called enrollment. Once you've done this, the university let the student finance company know and they're then able to release the first maintenance payment to you. The money that you're able to receive as a part of your maintenance loan is decided based on some different factors and this is a process called means testing. The first thing to consider is whether you hold independent student status or not. This status can be obtained for a variety of reasons, but effectively it means that your parents or guardians income is not considered when you make a student finance application. If you think that this might be applicable to you or you want to find out more about this, there's a link with further information that you can find at the end of this video, so you can check that out. The next thing to consider is your household income. This could be your parental income or your own household income depending on your status. This assessment means that those with the lowest household income are able to apply for a higher amount of student finance. The next thing to think about is whether you decide to move out of your parental home. If you decide to stay at home, then you're able to apply for a lower amount of finance compared to those who move away from home and then the final part is where in the country you study. So if you do move away from home, if you choose to study in London, you're able to apply for a higher amount of money due to the higher cost of living. There's a really handy tool you can use which is the student finance calculator with some basic information that can give you a good estimation as to how much you can actually apply for. You can use that link there or again, this will be at the end of the video for you. So just to look at how that maintenance entitlement is decided, the first question to ask is where you're going to be living. So if you decide to stay at your parental home, the minimum that everyone can apply for is 3,516 pounds. And then based on the household income, there's then that sliding scale which means that those with the lowest income will be able to have up to a maximum of 7,987 pounds and that household income sliding scale is applied to find out where in that entitlement you'll be. If you hold independent student status or you're moving away from your parental home, then you decide to live inside London. You'll be entitled to a minimum of 6,166 pounds. Again, with that sliding scale up to a maximum of 12,382 pounds. Or if you don't decide to live in London, then your minimum will be 4,422 with the sliding scale up to 9,488. And remember that sliding scale is based on household income. So once you receive your maintenance loan payment, it's really important to think about your expenses and your outgoings. As I said earlier, you'll receive this in three instalments once per term. And when you do receive it, you need to think about the expenses that you're going to have that term that you need to pay. The largest will probably be accommodation. I've put up the average here for our self-catered halls in London, at SOAS. And the rest of these costs here are based on sort of an estimate for a student studying in London. Because London does have a slightly higher cost of living that is accounted for by the additional maintenance loan entitlement. The total estimate here comes out to between sort of £1,000 and £1,300. So it's really worthwhile maybe making a list and thinking about these different costs and how much you expect they will be. Because that will help to give you a rough budget that you might want to stick to. So because student finance is alone, you will have to begin repaying it. However, the repayments for student finance are quite different from, say, a bank loan. So we'll just talk about these because if you understand them, it can really make the process a lot less daunting. Repayments for student finance don't actually start until you're earning over £27,295. This is the threshold amount. In recent years, that has increased to that figure and it's likely that in the future, it could go up. But for the moment, we'll work with that amount. As well as this, you don't actually have to start paying until the April after you graduate. So you might have a few months there where even if you're earning over that amount, you don't have to begin your payments. It's important to know that student finance repayments are completely dependent on your income. It's only taken from money that you earn over that threshold, £27,295. I'll show you some examples in a few moments. Because it's dependent on your income, if at any point your income drops, then the amount you have to repay drops as well. If your income drops below the threshold amount, then your repayments will stop. They become zero. And this is all done in a very easy way. It's automatic and it gets deducted from your pay each month. If you do choose to be self-employed, then you will have to contact the student loans company and they can tell you how to repay. But for most people who are in regular employment, then it's just taken away almost like a taxes from your pay. And because of this, I would just think of it as a bit of a government tax. The amount you have to pay back does gain interest, but after 30 years is completely written off. So even if you haven't paid it all back, that's okay, it gets written off after 30 years. And actually on this, the government only expect that 25% of students will fully pay off their loans before it gets written off. And those that are able to do this can do so because they have high paying jobs and are therefore more likely to be in a position to be able to afford this. So as I said, although it's called a loan, you should probably just think of it as an extra government tax that kicks in when you're earning over that certain salary threshold. And importantly at the bottom here, having student finance and being in receipt of a student loan will not affect your credit score. This can be really important in the future if you want to buy a house or apply for a credit product. So it's good to know that having your student finance is not going to have a negative impact on your credit score for the future. So we'll look at some repayment examples and just to recap, the amount you have to repay is currently 9% of your salary that's above the repayment threshold of 27,295 pounds. So say for your first job out of university, the April has gone by after you graduate and you're on 25,000 pounds. You have to make zero pounds of monthly repayments because none of your income is above that threshold. If say your second job is then bang on 27,295 pounds, you still make zero pounds in repayments because again, none of your income is actually above the threshold, you're just meeting it. Maybe you then get a promotion and you're earning 28,295 pounds. So that means you've got to have a salary which is 1,000 pounds a year above the threshold. So you're then going to be paying back 9% of 1,000 pounds. Each year that will be 90 pounds, which if we break it down to a monthly payment is seven pounds 50. Say you then move into a job that's a 30,000 pound salary. The amount above the repayment threshold now is 2,705 pounds. This gives you an annual repayment of 243 pounds, 45 pence, which then breaks down into a monthly repayment of 20 pounds, 29 pence. With a 35,000 pound salary, you have a monthly repayment of 57 pounds 79. And with a 40,000 pound salary, your monthly repayment is 95 pounds 29 pence. So hopefully you can see that this is completely salary dependent and income dependent. And it's only when you're earning above that threshold amount that you start actually having to make a repayment. There are also some extra sources of help that are outside of regular student finance. You might be eligible to apply for DSA, which is Disabled Students Allowance. And that helps to cover the cost of any extras that are a direct result of your disability. But that also includes long-term health conditions, mental health conditions and specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. There's also support available for parents in the form of the Parents Learning Allowance and if applicable, the childcare grants. If you have an adult who's financially dependent on you, then you can apply for the adult dependence grant. You might not fall into any of these categories, but you can also look out for bursary scholarships and grants. And these are typically pots of money that you don't have to pay back. An example of a bursary might be a bursary issued by a university to all students who have a family income of below a certain amount and they can then pay this money to you automatically. You might find that there are scholarships which cover course costs and could be awarded for a variety of different criteria or other grants that are available as well. So it's important to look out for these. Many students also choose to do part-time work whilst they're at university. It's important to find the balance so you're not working too much, but some part-time work can really help supplement your income. You might be able to work at the university or in the local area. As I mentioned throughout the presentation, there are some links that are available here which you might find helpful. So you might want to pause the video to check some of these out. The first is the information about eligibility criteria. Then is the student finance calculator. There's then information about independent student status. And then the respective links for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland student finance bodies. Thank you for watching this video. If you do have any questions or inquiries, then you can find us at studyatsoas.ac.uk. Thanks.