28th April 2023
How Much Student Maintenance Loan Are You Eligible For?
The student maintenance loan is an essential part of going to university. The student maintenance loan is intended to help students out while they’re studying, and it is paid back after they’ve graduated. But student loans can also be quite tricky to navigate, as there are a lot of technical terms associated.
All students are eligible for a different amount of money from the government, it is dependent on several factors, such as: location, age and parental income.
What Is A Maintenance Loan?
The student maintenance loan is designed to help cover the costs of university in the UK, which is taken out from the government. A maintenance loan is different from the tuition fees loan, which is intended to cover the costs of tuition — instead, it is meant to cover the associated expenses of students while attending university.
Living costs include:
- Essential spending such as:
- Rent.
- Bills.
- Food shopping.
- Student insurance.
- Non-essential things, such as:
- Going to restaurants.
- Bars.
- Clubs.
- The cinema.
- Buying new clothes or shoes.
All students are eligible for a student maintenance loan which is paid directly to their bank account in three instalments, for each year that they are attending university.
How Is The Student Maintenance Loan Calculated?
When a student applies for student finance , they will have to supply lots of information about themselves; this information is used to calculate the amount the loan will be for the applicant.
The information includes:
- Your age.
- Location.
- Whether you are a UK citizen.
- And information about the household income (parent’s income and jobs).
There are other criteria that can affect the size of maintenance loan that eligible students receive, such as:
- Being from a single-parent or a low-income family.
- Whether you wish to live at home or in student accommodation.
- Where you wish to study at university, for instance, studying in London they will receive higher maintenance loans due to the increased living costs.
How Much Maintenance Loan Should A Student Receive?
Students can calculate how much they’re eligible for by using the .gov/student-finance-calculator . This gives a rough estimate, and it may not be 100% accurate, but it’s an effective way for students to see what they’re eligible for before applying for university. Because there are several factors involved in the calculation of student finance , there’s a high chance that one student’s loan could be very different to someone else’s.
How And When Is The Maintenance Loan Paid?
The student maintenance loan will be paid directly to the applicant’s bank account in three instalments throughout the year. The exact dates of when the payments will be made will vary from university to university and change yearly but expect to receive one instalment per term.
The loan is usually split into three equal instalments, depending on how much money you’re eligible for, however, you may find that one payment is slightly more than the others. The maintenance loan instalments normally paid around the start of each term, so the payments should arrive around late September/early October, January and March/April. This is the same for the whole of the UK except for Scotland, where students will receive payments equally on the 7th of each month.
Applicants will be contacted via text or email a few days before an instalment is due, to let them know that the payment is its way. The students can also log in to their student finance account to check the exact timetable of payments and how much they can expect to receive per instalment.
