Top Tips

Top Tips For Applicants and Offer Holders

• The Fee Regulations require universities to use three main criteria to determine your fee status: nationality, immigration status in the UK and country of ordinary residence for the three years leading up to the start of your degree course. Holding a UK or an EU passport does not guarantee you Home fee status or student finance support.

• If your fee status isn't immediately apparent from the information given in your original application, your Admissions Office will send you a 'Fee Status Assessment Questionnaire' when they offer you a place. You'll need to complete this and return it to them, along with the supporting documents they've asked for, to enable them to make the correct assessment.  

• Don't be concerned if your initial fee status assessment appears to be incorrect. Admissions Offices can change your fee status if you're able to provide them with sufficient evidence to support your claim. 

• If your UK immigration status has changed during the three year period leading up to your course start date, please send us copies of all your UK immigration travel documents relating to this period. This may mean that you need to send us a share code, multiple passport vignettes and residence permits, and/or a naturalisation certificate. In the absence of one of the travel documents, please send us a copy of the corresponding Home Office grant of leave letter. We'll advise you if further documents are required. 

• The Fee Regulations state that you won't be considered ordinarily resident in a country if you live there 'wholly or mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education'. Undergraduate applicants are usually be assessed as ordinarily resident in the same country as their parents, even if you're studying in a different country to them, unless they can demonstrate that they're self-sufficient. 

• The Fee Regulations allow universities to discount short periods of 'temporary absence' from your normal country of residence when assessing ordinary residence. This only applies if the absence was clearly temporary - please see 'Temporary Absence' in the Glossary. Examples of temporary absence include a gap year, a summer internship, attending school in a different country, or a temporary relocation due to a parent taking up a fixed-term contract or assignment overseas.

• The Glossary contains a list of documents that will help us determine your country of ordinary residence. If you are dependent upon your partner/spouse/parents, we realise that household bills will be in their name - just let us know (and demonstrate) the bill payer's relationship to you.

• If you've been living in a different country for a temporary period due to you or a family member taking up overseas employment, please send us copies of all the employment contracts (including assignment agreements and contract extension letters) relating to the three year period leading up to your course start date. 

• Keep these documents handy - you may need to submit them as part of any student finance application too.