Graduate Entry Medicine - Student Loan - Money Troubles

**dr_spank101** · 16-04-2005, 02:01 AM

Hello Everyone

I am a Bio Med Student in Essex Uni. I am hoping to go on to do Graduate Entry Medicine in 2006. However I am worrying myself silly with the money issues. I have already had LEA support for my fee's for this degree I am doing now. I have also had a student loan for this degree. I am 21 at the mo and will be 22 when i graduate. The question i want to ask is does anyone know if i would be entitled to a student loan for the Medicine degree and if so how much would I be able to get? Would I still have to pay tutition fees for the medicine degree. My parents are divorced so the income assesment falls to my mother, who due to sickness only earns about £1500 a year. I really need some advice on goverment bursaries aswell, and if I would be entitled to them. I didn't think it would be so hard to do degree's as a graduate. Please any advice would help. I really want to study Medicine, it is my dream.

Thanks
Phil Wilcox

**exms** · 16-04-2005, 02:07 AM

Check out the FAQ in my sig, but the short answers are:

Student loan: Yes you can get one

DoH Bursaries: For GEP courses, in years 2-4. For 5/6 year courses, years 5 and onwards

Tuition fees: You'll be doing the top-up fee thang. ~3000 quid/yr, but you'll get a loan (separate from the student loan entitlement) to cover it, and you won't have to repay it until you're earning 15K+. Currently, in years when you get a bursary your tuition fees are paid for you. I don't know if this will still apply when topup fees come in.

Since you are under 25 and have not worked/supported yourself for three years, you will be considered a dependant of your mother. Since her income is bugger all, you should get top whack for student loans and bursary.

HTH

-- A.

**dr_spank101** · 16-04-2005, 02:17 AM

Hi

Thanks for the quick reply.
I rang up my LEA this morning and they said I could only get a student loan at only 50% of a normal undergraduate loan. So if I was in London, the undergraduate loan is £5100 appox , therefore I could only get £2550. Is this true? Or are they yanking my chain.

Also when you say i get a seperate loan do you mean I get one loan to live on and then a seperate loan to pay the fee's off? (sorry if this seems like a retorical question, just doin exam revision).
I do have a job in a hospital as a Healthcare assistant - so i am tryin to scrape up all the money i can.

Cheers
Phil

**exms** · 16-04-2005, 02:22 AM

Originally Posted by dr_spank101

I rang up my LEA this morning and they said I could only get a student loan at only 50% of a normal undergraduate loan. So if I was in London, the undergraduate loan is £5100 appox , therefore I could only get £2550. Is this true? Or are they yanking my chain.

In years when you get the bursary, you can only get 50% of the loan. The rest of the time you can get as much as a normal undergraduate loan. I'm on a GEP and am getting a full loan in year 1, so unless they've made some drastic change then I suspect your LEA are misunderstanding you.

Originally Posted by dr_spank101

Also when you say i get a seperate loan do you mean I get one loan to live on and then a seperate loan to pay the fee's off? (sorry if this seems like a retorical question, just doin exam revision).

It's a good question - it's not clear yet (or at least, not to me), whether the student loans will be expanded to include the 3000 quid tuition fee loans or whether they'll be entirely separate. I *expect* they'll just increase the student loan amounts but have the tuition fee portion be paid direct to the uni.

-- A.

**dr_spank101** · 16-04-2005, 02:31 AM

Hello
Thankyou for your help and putting my mind at rest.
So u r doing the 1st year of the GEP, where are u doing it?
What is the work load like? As I would like to be able to transfer my job at the hospital where i work now to the place I will be going to, and continue working so i have the money of course but also the work experience.
I am thinking about Southampton University and maybe Queen Marys and St Barts Med School but they do they MSAT and I'm not sure if i'll get through it.

Thanks
Phil

**exms** · 16-04-2005, 02:35 AM

I'm at Swansea, and (in my opinion) the workload is too high to sustain a job as well. I do know a couple of people who are working, but they have jobs where they can do a few hours here and there at relatively short notice.

Pick the 4 choices carefully - the FAQ has some suggestions but there are plenty of people on here who can critique your choices!

Right, bedtime for me.

Cheers,

-- A.

**banana** · 16-04-2005, 08:47 PM

Hi,
just thought I'd say that you can get professional studies loans that give you up to 5 grand a year at reasonably low interest (1% above base rate at HSBC). I've got one and I'm at soton GEP.

I'd say that the work load at soton does allow you to work part time too but GEPs seem to vary in the level of intesity so I expect this wouldn't be true for all courses.

Good luck anyway.

**Daedalus** · 17-04-2005, 01:11 PM

Originally Posted by exms

In years when you get the bursary, you can only get 50% of the loan. The rest of the time you can get as much as a normal undergraduate loan. I'm on a GEP and am getting a full loan in year 1, so unless they've made some drastic change then I suspect your LEA are misunderstanding you.

Of course, if you are relatively young (under 24?) and have never been financially independent from your parents, then you might not actually be eligible to receive the bursary, BUT you are still only given 50% of the student loan.

This glaring inequity has caught a few people who are now in a difficult financial position.

**dr_spank101** · 17-04-2005, 02:36 PM

Hello Again

Thanks for the response, I'm glad to hear that there may be some solutions. However I was wondering if I was to get a personal loan from HSBC would this be payable after I graduate from medicine. Also is there a limit on how much i get, i.e could i get one each year? And when you say 1% above base rate, what does this mean. Interest?

Does anybody have any suggestions on the financial situation I should take, it seems there are multiple options but I have never been good with sorting of money, it has usually just been pretty relaxed, only now I am finding it diificult. I want to at least get something sorted so I won't be worrying about this when I am actually doing medicine.

Cheers
Phil

**Sipadan** · 17-04-2005, 03:51 PM

Hi, I have an HSBC loan. You pay it back after you graduate. I think the limit is 20 - 25k, spread over the course of your studies. The interest rate is 1% above the Bank of England base interest rate.

As for a strategy, go for as much cash as you possibly can. Student loans are a dirt cheap way of borrowing money and interest free overdrafts are a gift. The NHS bursary is nice if you can get it. HSBC professional study loans or similar aren't as cheap, but once you've agreed an amount and payment dates, you can decide whether you want the next payment or not. If you don't want it no problem, if you do it's there and this takes some of the panic away.

In short, if you're a regular kind of student, don't have extreme debt already or haven't run into financial trouble before, I don't see why financial considerations would stop you from studing medicine. STOP WORRYING