… if you’re ill, or prone to high blood pressure, or of a nervous disposition, DON’T APPLY FOR STUDENT FINANCE.
Your health will thank you for it, even if you’re left as a skint student living off scraps with nowhere to stay. That’s looking like the more attractive prospect at the moment as opposed to heading back into that dangerous frontier of the Student Finance Wales website. Here is a run-down of why the application is so stressful.
- It’s full of stupid questions. Whilst filling out a calculator which will tell you what loans and grants will be available to you in the next academic year, one of the questions you have to answer is, “What loans and grants will be available to you in the next academic year?”. Funnily enough, I don’t know, which is why I’m doing this calculator to try and find out!
- Whilst you’re filling in the calculator, which takes ages as you try to figure out what the question actually means (in the end I just put “£0”, I’m fairly sure it’s true), the application form logs you out and makes you start from scratch because if you’re not active for 15 minutes they have an automatic log out, so you have to start all over again.
- They randomly change your security question from one you’ve provided an answer to, to a question you’ve never seen before, let alone one you’ve answered.
- Not only do they want you to go through the rigorous process of registering before you can even begin to think of applying, they then want your parents to go through it too, individually of course – so just when you think you’re actually getting somewhere, you then have to get your parents to do exactly the same. Yay! Not.
- If you put in any information, chances are they will have forgotten it by the next step and you’ll have to repeat yourself. Possibly more than once, if you’re unlucky.
- Even if you registered two years ago for EMA and have probably only heard from them once or twice since then, you’re expected to still remember every tiny log-in detail. If you don’t, they’ll send you re-set details which will probably also be wrong.
In short, it’s not been the most relaxing of mornings. I’m not at college because I’m ill but I thought, best do something academic today, even if it’s only applying for finance. What can possibly go wrong? My blood pressure must be through the ceiling, I’m all hot and bothered, the co-codamol is wearing off and I don’t think I’ve ever sworn so much at my laptop. I suppose it has been an enlightening experience – I’ve learned that Student Finance Wales make it as hard as possible to secure any financial support, they want it to be as time-consuming as possible and I know a lot of quite creative swear words (personally, I blame my mom’s teatowel, the periodic table of swears). However, no amount of learning can make up for quite how ill this application has made me feel already.
In the end, I’ve elected to do most of the rest of it by hand and send it in the post. I think it’ll be better in the long run – particularly for my laptop, which has found itself on the brink of being launched at the wall more than once this morning.