Fees and Funding

While obtaining a degree certainly comes at a cost, statistics show that graduates generally have better career options and salaries than non graduates. For example, a qualification in chemistry translates into an increase of around £ 190,000 in lifetime earnings [1].

Information about the College's tuition fees and financial support schemes is available from the "Fees and Funding" section of the main Queen Mary website:

In addition, Queen Mary's Advice and Counselling Service has lots of useful information on money matters.

As a School, we recognise that the new fees regime (coming into force in September 2012) is of concern to prospective students and we will do everything possible to minimize additional costs that may be incurred during the degree, but we cannot completely eliminate these. The following sets-out what type of costs we are able to cover or mitigate, and what additional costs our students may still have to meet.

What costs do we cover ?

  • Laboratory coats and safety spectacles for practical classes
  • Compulsory learning aids (e.g. Mastering Biology, EVS Clickers)
  • Travel and basic subsistence costs for first-year and second-year field trips.
  • Subsidies towards third-year field trips
  • Printing of posters (when these are required as part of a module's assessment)
  • A wide range of course notes, data booklets, laboratory manuals etc.
  • Access to a range of general and scientific software via QM's Student PC Service
  • On-campus high-speed internet access (including WiFi)
  • Some software for installation on students' personal laptops (e.g. ChemDraw)
  • An initial free printing allocation (ca. 100 pages)

What costs may you still have to cover ?

  • Textbooks for personal purchase (these can be quite expensive, and you should perhaps allow for £ 200 over the duration of your degree programme, but the Queen Mary library maintains multiple copies of all recommended texts)
  • Full costs of the third-year field trips, such as Tropical Ecology and Advanced Aquatic Biology (although we do provide generous subsidies for students wishing to take these courses)
  • Appropriate clothing for field trips, such as boots, waterproofs etc. (it is essential that you have adequate clothing for such courses, for reasons of both comfort and safety)
  • General printing/photocopying costs (printing facilities are widely available on-campus, and typically charged at 4p per A4 black-and-white page)

 

[1] PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Economic Benefits of Higher Education Qualifications, 2005.