Sally Redux

H1B is a dual-intent visa and if you've sold your home and are desperate to stay out of Britain it seems like stretching a point to try to appeal for home fees to me.

dunroving

FYI, generally, offers are not conditional on the prospective student paying home fees or international fees.

Jerseygirl

Of course. My daughter's US friend went to Edinburgh...he was as thick as two short planks...we all knew the only reason he was accepted was because of £££'s. He lasted about a year and a half before he dropped out.

Jerseygirl

Who do you think 'changed the goalposts'? The wording of 'temporary visa' is the handle the US has given it...nothing to do with the UK. You've been out of the UK for approx 8 years...was your husband on a temporary assignment...if so do you have proof and proof of ties to the UK? If not you can read into the wording any which way you will but you were permanently living outside the UK for 8 years.

JT1

Many thanks for this information, I shall keep you informed as to our progress, or not

Bob

cake and eat it comes to mind....good luck to the kids though.

JT1

That's what it's all about my dear man.

ThingsAndStuff

JT1's daughter here.

I realise these are forums and forum users tend to take great delight in their bravado and attacking others, but please realise there are actual people on the other end. There is no need for the offensive attitude some of you appear to have taken.

Thank you to those who were genuinely helpful. If anyone has any other advice for me please feel free to drop me a PM

Jerseygirl

As far as I can see no one has been attacked or had an offensive attitude in this thread. We've tried to help by giving honest answers. It may not be the answers that some were looking for...but that doesn't make them offensive.

ThingsAndStuff

Nope, people don't get offended by receiving answers they weren't looking for. Disappointed, maybe, but not offended. People get offended by others' attitudes and tones.

Maybe there was no offence intended (and maybe there was nothing cynical or mocking about the "cake and eat it" comment either) but this is the internet, and one must be careful of the way things are written or they may be construed differently than one intends.

Anyway, not going to argue further. My mother taught me manners

Bob

Nothing mocking about it, but you can't go for permanent residency and then feel things were only temporary. There's nothing temporary about extending a visa and living close to a decade abroad.

It might be unfortunate but them the rules and the consequences of ones actions.

Things might have played out different if you'd looked into this earlier, such as going back to the UK alone to do A-levels or any other such scenario, but they don't help you out now, hindsight and all that.

dunroving

To be fair, I do feel sympathy for children of expats who want to study for degrees in the UK but are classed as internationals because of the actions of their parents. On the other hand, from prior threads on a similar topic, it was evident that the prospective student had no intention of subsequently staying in (and therefore contributing to) the UK, which explains some of the attitudes that come across in replies ("have your cake and eat it" for example - this pretty accurately describes some past cases).

Maybe the solution should be some sort of "conditional" home fees status for children of expats - conditional on the graduate remaining in the UK for 3 years post-graduation, for example.

It does seem rather inconsistent that any returning expat can immediately get free NHS and schooling, but not higher education.

formula

You can survive without a student loan: both my children did. However, it will entail both you and your parents putting in the hours to do this if your parents haven’t already saved for your further education.

I took on extra work to give my children £80 a week each, every week, even during the holidays and for two years I had both at university at he same time! My children also worked 20 hours a week during term time and full time during the holidays and I fed them during the holidays when they came home. The good news is that they certainly entered the fulltime workplace with a good work ethic and I was flushed when they finished university.

Your mother has had a lot of good advice on here and nobody has been offensive, but there is no denying that your family emigrated 8 years ago and this was not a "temporary" move. Whether your parents get away with getting you home fees and a student loan, I don’t know, but it is not the end of your education if you don’t get a student loan as you can cope without with your parents help. Then you just have the international fee loan to find and surely your parents would help with this?

It might also be worth researching to see what degrees, grades and which university/ies employers want, as many graduates are leaving university with debt and a degree that employers don't want.

One other thing I have heard from international students is the problem they have getting a job while at university, as the home students have already been working in the supermarkets and just transfer to their university area. Perhaps you can get ahead of the game there and get a full time job working in a supermarket now, so you can just transfer areas when you go to university. You have 7 more months before university starts, to work as many hours as you can and add this to the money you have already earned.

BTW, don’t forget to look on Amazon for second hand course books when you get your list at university.

dunroving

In my experience, UK undergraduates don't tend to buy textbooks. Conversations with colleagues at other UK universities indicate the same. It's a completely different culture from US universities in that respect.

I think you raise another potential consideration, namely that maybe now is not a good time to go to university, especially if it will cost you $9,000 a year in international fees ... there has been a lot of debate in the press lately about the "value" of a UK degree and the low employment rate of UK graduates. The assumption (in the UK and US) that children should just drift (I use the word deliberately, rather than "transition" or some other fashionable buzzword) from high school to college/university is rarely challenged.

I think we are very much in an "Emperor's new clothes" situation, and if I were a parent of an 18-year old I would be counselling him/her to think seriously about getting work (ANY kind of work - I spent a year doing various jobs between secondary school and college) for a few years, getting some life experience, and only then deciding whether university is a good idea. Added benefits at that point would be a more insightful and critical attitude towards learning, hopefully a financial base that would make paying for university expenses easier, being eligible for home fees status, and potentially other advantages associated with programmes to get "nontraditional" (older, etc.) students into university. Another advantage would be reinforcement of a valuable life skill, namely understanding the concept of delayed gratification. We can't always get what we want, and get it now. Understanding and living by that principle is as good as anything you will learn from a lecture on media studies or political science.

formula

Warwick and Bristol (where my children went) do. My youngest is just selling the last of his books to other university students. I'm posting them for him and they have gone to London addresses and one went back to Warwick halls.

That is so true, especially when you look at what electricians earn! Not every graduate will be a high earner, but they will still have the debt.

Some (many?) degrees and/or universities, are worthless to employers. TBH, my children wouldn't be high rate tax payers if they didn't have a good degree from a good university. Some potential students would be better working in the job and getting a day release for study. Longer and harder I know, but at least they have a job at the end of it and the firm pays for their degree.

If you offer to teach for a while, the government use to pick your university fees. Maths and science graduates got chased by the government to enter their "teach first" programme.

Richard Branson and Bill Gates haven't got degrees.