Essential money facts for new students

Not sure about how your student finance works or what happens when? Here are the essential facts to all things student money…..

If you have been assessed for student finance from any of the UK funding authorities (England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland) there is a process you have to follow before you receive your first instalment………

1. If you applied for your funding online before 25th March 2018, you will be required to send Student Finance a loan declaration form. You can find this document on your Student Finance portal and there will be a prompt for you to do this with the correct form you need to complete and return. If you applied for your funding after 25th March 2018, you won’t need to send a loan declaration – your electronic signature will suffice.
2. You need to enrol online. Online enrolment opened on 23rd August, so look out for an email we sent you after this date which will contain all the correct links. Read more about University of Brighton online enrolment
3. Come to the correct in-person enrolment event. To find out when this is, log on to Brighton studentcentral, go to the Studies tab and click on My Course. We enrol students at all campuses over 3 days during the week commencing Monday 24th September. Make sure to bring all the paperwork we have asked you to provide.
4. Once you have enrolled in person, the university tells Student Finance that you are here. This is an automatic process and usually runs smoothly (**insert crossed fingers emoji here**) so all being well you should receive the first instalment into your chosen bank account 3-4 working days after you have been to the in-person enrolment event. Take a couple of minutes to check the bank details you submitted with your funding application as if you’ve now opened a student bank account and changed your details, you might want to change which account your loan gets paid into.
5. If you haven’t received your funding after 5 working days, check your Student Finance account.

• If your status says ‘Your university or college needs to confirm your registration’ this means that there has been a problem with us telling Student Finance you are here. We can rectify this very easily, so go to the Student Information Desk in Student Services as soon as possible.
• If it reads next to your Tuition Fee Loan ‘awaiting attendance confirmation’ don’t worry, this is perfectly normal and will not affect your maintenance payments. We will be requesting all fee loan payments from students later, so this wording will change to ‘paid’ in November.
• Does it say payments are ‘Blocked’? Don’t panic! This usually means that your funding authority is verifying your National Insurance Number (NINO) which usually takes an extra week or so once you have returned your loan declaration, if you needed to.

We’ll be posting regular updates about all things money and funding so hopefully all your questions will be answered.

In the meantime, if you have got any questions at all

Students Advice Service