big gay kirk
Senior Member
Now I'm really gonna p**s you all off.... when I was at Uni, we got a grant.... I qualified for 1500 quid a year (at a time when 6500 a year was considered an ok wage...) we didn't have loans unless we wanted to.... our tuition fees were paid for, rent took about 400 pounds a year off (even less if you managed to find your own digs or share) and part time jobs in the students union were plentiful... of course, back then, only the top 17% did A-levels, and of those less than half went on to university... and of those who did, a quarter (like me!!!) left before getting their degrees.... to have any chance of getting in, you had to have realgood A-level resultas, and As were hard to get... if you didn't score at least 90% in the exams (at least four papers for each subject, no texts or calculators etc allowed) then that was it.... I was lucky enough to get enough points over six A-levels(!!) (three of which I had to fund myself... hardly anyone took more than three..) and pass a Cambridge entrance exam.... which got me into Loughboro' Uni on a technical course that I didn't want to do... cos back then, if you didn't qualify for your media studies course at Durham, your name got pyut in a hat and you could end up being told... "You can do math at Lampeter, or try again next year..." I left after two weeks... best thing I ever did...