How to get your first payment if you’re applying late

If you haven’t applied yet or you’ve just recently applied for your full-time undergraduate student finance, here’s what needs to happen to make sure you have some funding in place for when your course starts.

1. Applying for student finance

It’s important if you haven’t already done so to create an account or sign into your online account and apply as soon as possible.

It’s quick and easy to apply online - it only takes 30 minutes with your:

• Passport details

• National Insurance number

• UK bank details

You don’t need a confirmed place at uni or college to apply, you can apply now and update your details later if you need to.

2. Check your online account

You don’t need to call us to track the progress of your application. Once you’ve applied for student finance, you can check your online account to:

• Use our application status tracker

• Check ‘Your actions to complete’

• Upload evidence

• Reset your password or secret answer

• Update your personal details

If we need any further information from you, a red banner will appear and your action ‘status’ will show as incomplete. The banner will stay red until the information has been provided and it will turn green when all your actions have been completed.

3. We’ll sort out your initial funding

You might not know that everyone qualifies for a minimum amount of funding if they pass all the eligibility checks.

We’ll assess you quickly without considering your household income so we can make sure you have some funding in place for when you start your course. We’ll send you a letter confirming your minimum entitlement. You can also check your online account for an update. You’ll get the rest of your money as soon as we process the household income details.

4. We’ll assess the rest of your application

We’ll then assess the household details part of your application if you’ve applied for this – this usually takes us 6 to 8 weeks.

If you’re applying for a higher amount of student finance based on your household income, make sure to ask your parents or partner to provide their financial information as soon as possible to avoid delays to your application.

They’ll need to sign into an existing account or create an account to submit their details. They don’t need to upload any evidence, especially not P60s, unless we ask for it - this will delay the application.

5. What you need to do to get your first payment

In order to get your first student finance payment, you’ll also need to register at your uni or college before your course starts, as we won’t be able to pay you until you do. Once you’ve completed these steps, we’ll contact you a few days before your course starts, confirming your first payment date.

You don’t need to call us to check your payment date, sign in to your online account to view your payment schedule.

6. When your application is fully approved

Once we’ve assessed your household income details, we’ll then send you another letter confirming your full entitlement amount. If you’ve already received a payment from us, we’ll pay the difference as soon as possible, and your second and third payments will increase too.

For a whole range of student finance information, visit our campaign page and follow us on:

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