Hi all,
i've got an offer for the MA in sussex uni to do the early modern literature course. However, i have no way of paying for it other than with working in a low paid job full-time and commuting to get to lectures.
Am now thinking i might have to go part-time and move down to the uni area...
any thoughts please.

Hi- can you get a career development loan for it? - It's been a while since I did my MA so am not sure if they are still available, but that's how I managed to do it (even though it is a complete rip-off!)

Hi,
i was thinking of trying one of those but it says it is for vocational subjects so i doubt that includes english lit. Well worth ago- why is it a rip off?

Hello again- it said about it being for vocational courses only for mine as well, but they didn't really ask many questions about it (mine was politics, so not strictly vocational either!)- could be worth looking into or speaking to one of the banks that runs them. (This all comes with the proviso that I did my MA in 2005, so may not apply now..) It's a bit of rip-off because the interest is something like 12%- you don't pay when you are studying (which is great) but then you have to pay it back over 4 or 5 years (which isn't..). Having said that, I wouldn't have been able to do my MA without it, and so long as I get a fairly decent pay packet in the end I don't mind! Could also be worth checking if there are jobs in the union or in the library for extra funds, good luck though..

to get some funding would be great. Thanks for your advice. Are they pretty picky about giving who they give out these loans to?

From my experience (again in 2005, so sorry if this isn't helpful) they weren't- I had no guaranteed means to pay it back at the time and my credit rating isn't exactly good, though this may have changed with the current economic situation etc. When I applied the max you could get was about £8000, so it pays for the fees and possibly rent as well. It's a real shame that funding for masters courses is so hard to come by, but the CDL could possibly be worth looking at if it's the same as it was a few years ago.

CDLs are still available: I have a small one to supplement my partial funding. However, the US company Sallie Mae which recently started business here has closed down its UK operations. I preferred their loan scheme: you could request as much as you needed instead of having an upper limit (may be more than 8K now) and you could use the funds for anything. If you want to pay your fees with a CDL, you can only use it for 80% of them and come up with the rest yourself, AFAIK. Luckily for me, my fees were paid for me. :)

Co-Op do the best ones IMO: their rates are lower and I reckon they are a pretty decent bank, compared to Barclays and HBOS.