A budgeting tool built on actual city costs
UCAS has launched a budgeting tool letting applicants calculate what living at a particular university would really cost, city by city. It follows the calculator added to the UCAS Hub last summer and is the most useful thing published for applicants this month: rent varies more between cities than maintenance loans do, and the difference decides whether a year works financially. Budgeting covers what the tool leaves out.
Postgraduate loan applications open
Applications for postgraduate master’s and doctoral loans for 2026/27 are now open for students in England and Wales. The master’s loan is a contribution rather than full funding — it rarely covers fees and living costs together — so check what the course costs before committing. Is a masters worth it covers the arithmetic.
Student Loans Company, 22 July
Teaching quality, ranked: Newcastle lowest
The National Student Survey’s teaching measure puts Newcastle lowest among Russell Group universities at 85.6 per cent. As with every NSS table published this month, the institutional figure hides enormous course-level variation — and the course figure is the one that describes your degree.
How students get caught by payment scams
An account of the payment scams targeting international students — discounted tuition offers, impossibly good exchange rates, and third parties offering to pay fees on a student’s behalf. The rule that defeats all of them: pay the university directly, through the channel on its own website, and never through an intermediary offering a discount.