How much money will I need to support myself?
The fees at UK universities do not include any charge for accommodation or living expenses. This means that you will need to have enough money to pay for all of your other expenses, including accommodation, food, clothes, travel, books and entertainment costs. As a postgraduate student you will probably already have had some experience of managing your own money, working out a budget and living within the budget you set, so this will not be a new or strange experience. However, the costs of all these parts of your budget may be very different to what you are used to – some items that are quite low cost in your own country may be relatively expensive in the UK, while others may be relatively cheap.

It is not easy to indicate an exact amount for how much you will need to support yourself each week or each month. This is partly because everybody’s lifestyle, priorities, needs and costs are different. However, it is also because there are quite significant differences in costs in different parts of the UK.

Accommodation rent may be much higher, for example, in London than in some other cities or towns. Travel costs may be higher in large cities where you may need to live at some distance from your university. Even the cost of food and entertainment varies from place to place.

The costs below, therefore, are intended to give you a general picture of the cost of living, in London and in other parts of the UK.

Typical weekly costs for a postgraduate student 

For a full year in the UK you will need to budget for about £11,000 if you are going to live in London and about £9,000 if you are going to live elsewhere.

For a more detailed picture of the cost of living in each university town or city you should refer to The Royal Bank of Scotland Student Living Index 2007. This was devised in 2004 by the bank to help students use cost of living information in choosing where they might go to university. Although aimed at undergraduates, it is useful in providing a general picture of costs for a postgraduate. Whether these prices seem expensive or not, of course, will depend from which part of the world you are coming to the UK, and on the exchange rate of your own currency with the pound sterling.

These costs are, of course, for you as an individual student. If you are going to come to the UK with your family then there will be additional costs to support them too, and it is reasonable to estimate that you will need an additional £5,000 for your husband or wife and £2,000 per year for each of your children.

One cost that many students forget to include when thinking about the budget for their postgraduate programme is the cost of travelling to and from the UK. You will certainly need to pay for transport to the UK at the start of your programme and home again at the end of it. However, you may feel that you will want to return home to visit friends and family during your studies. If you are taking a one-year Masters programme then you may feel you will not need to do this, but if you are coming to the UK for a Doctorate and will be here for three years you may want to visit your home perhaps at the end of each year. Although travel can be expensive, if you plan carefully and a long time ahead you may be able to find quite low cost airfares.

And then there is the cost of some of the opportunities that will be available for you in the UK. You will certainly feel that you want to see something of British life, culture and landscape while you are here, so you might want to budget for a number of visits to other parts of the UK. This can often be arranged quite cheaply through student travel organisations in the UK, which you will find out about from the Student Union in your university. Overall, though, you will not want to return home after your studies feeling that you have seen nothing more than life in the university town or city that you chose to study in. So, you need to budget for this.