100 Interesting Things.

1. Youngsters in the poorest areas are more likely to go to university than they were five years ago.
2. Best university city in the UK. Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Cardiff and St Andrews.
3. 22% of respondents who were planning to attend university said they felt ‘pressured’ to do so by friends and family.
4. One night of heavy drinking can impair your ability to think abstractly for up to 30 days, limiting your ability to relate textbook reading to what your lecturer says.
5. Unions reporting a decline in profits over the past 5 years.
6.  Leeds Metropolitan University drink 26.7 units of alcohol per week.
7. Vodka is the drink of choice for students.
8. One fifth of participants in a survey say that they would not be able to survive a term at uni without drinking some form of alcohol.
9. A lot of non-drinking students wish that alcohol wasn't such a big part of university life.
10. Just over half of students surveyed said that after a night out they experienced memory loss.
11. Studying in London is almost 50% more expensive than studying in Wales.
12. Hundreds of thousands of pounds go unclaimed every year in bursaries, scholarships, prizes, all sorts.
13. Last year the Government spent £5 billion on student grants and loans. If they spent the same amount on Mars Bars, they could line them up on the equator and go round the earth two and a half times.
14. Americans now owe more than $875 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.
15. A study by MyMemory has discovered that the average British Facebook user is intoxicated in 76% of their tagged photos.
16. Almost all of respondents of a survey have apparently untagged photos after deeming them ‘too embarrassing.’
17. About 83% of British 16 to 24-year-olds are thought to use social networking sites to keep in touch with friends and organise their social lives.
18. 8 hours of sleep is the most common amount for students.
19. The number of students taking British degrees overseas has overtaken the number of foreign students at UK universities.
20. If international students in the UK overstay for more than 28 days days they may be barred from coming back to the UK for at least a year, but potentially five or ten years.
21. International students can get a part time job during their period of study but cannot be self employed, be employed as a professional sportsperson or coach, be employed as an entertainer or take up a full time job.
22. Some postgraduate positions come with funding attached. These are called studentships. Studentships can cover both fees and living expenses, but there tends to be a lot of competition.
23. Some regions in the UK have their own postgraduates funding schemes.
24. If postrgrad course is related to a job a student is currently working in, they might be able to get postgraduate funding by way of a sponsor from their employer.
25. Many charities and trusts provide postgraduate students with grants. Often, financial help is reserved for students from poorer backgrounds, or for those who’ve achieved academic excellence.
26. The most common type of student accommodation for first years, halls of residence are owned by each individual university. 
27. Internet access is now standard in most university halls of residence, though not all.
28. Most university towns now have specific areas with particularly dense populations of students - a process known as studentification.
29. Private halls are a relatively recent form of student accommodation. As the number of students going to university has increased, developers have spotted an opportunity to make some money through private sector halls of residence.
30. Since the dip in the housing market, many parents have decided to cash in by buying properties in university towns and renting them out to their children (and children’s friends).
31. The general rule is that rent in the north tends to be cheaper, while London is the most expensive place to be a student.
32. A letting agent is essentially a middle man between students and their landlord.
33. Private landlords will usually ask for 6-8 weeks worth of rent as a deposit as they see young people as high risk tenants (more likely to cause damage to the property) so will often ask for a larger deposit.
34. Banks tend to offer such great rates to uni students because they know how lazy they are and that when they graduate, the likelihood of them switching from the provider of our student account is very low.
35. Halifax and HSBC offer two of the most enticing student bank accounts, with their mammoth £3,000 interest-free overdrafts, available as soon as you start uni.
36. Gas and electricity will probably be the largest of student bills.
37. Standard tariffs can costs homes around £1,150 per year - however if students switch to an online tariff they will save, for the same usage, an average of over £200. 
38. Unless students have money before they start or receive generous contributions from their parents, it’s very unlikely that they’ll finish university with out being in debt.
39. Average weekly budget for students in England. Alcohol (at home or out) £22.86, buying clothes £18.88, going out £17.25, eating out £15.63, cigarettes £15.19, utility bills £20.60, transport for long trips £19.87, day to day travel £11.06, telephone bills £10.04, books/course material £9.63, CD/DVD's £9.38, Laundry £4.38, Photocopying/library costs £3.91, rent £77.88.
40. In 2009 NatWest carried out a study into the living costs of students in cities across the country. Rather unsurprisingly, the cheapest city to study in was found to be Manchester, with rent of £73.57 per week and general living costs of £174.48, followed closely by Birmingham. When talking about rent alone, the cheapest place to live is Leicester - at £65.89 per month.
41. The most expensive place to study (outside of London) was Oxford, with a total weekly expenditure of £323.03 per month.
42. Having a student credit card is also a good way of boosting your credit rating - a file that contains a history of all your financial borrowing, including loans, credit cards and store cards. If you pay back everything on time and don’t go over your credit card limit, then there will be no black marks against your name and it will be easier to borrow money in the future.
43. From 2012/13 there will also be a new £150m National Scholarship Programme creating further students grants for lower income families. This was created with an aim to make sure poorer students still apply for university despite the increases in tuition fees.
44. Book train tickets up to 12 weeks in advance to get cheap tickets.
45. Tuition fees are a relatively new idea. Introduced in 1998 by Tony Blair and New Labour, university tuition fees were originally set at £1,000 per year, rising by the rate of inflation each year.
46. While universities claimed they were desperately in need of extra funds, many argued that seeing as individuals who attend university benefit directly from having gained a degree they should have to fund it. The counter argument says that seeing as the biggest beneficiary of an educated population is the national economy itself, higher education should be funded by the government.
47. In 2006 the cap on university tuition fees was raised - meaning universities were allowed to decide how much they charged for a particular course up to a maximum of £3,000 per year.
48. While it was originally claimed that £9,000 was simply the maximum amount universities could charge and that very few would decide to go that high, it was recently announced that over a third of universities plan on charging the full amount.
49. When it was first announced that the cap would be raised to £9,000 the government said that any university wishing to charge above £6,000 per year would have to have an ‘access agreement’ approved by the government. Meaning that they must widen access to their university for poorer students.
50. At present graduates have to start repaying their loans after they have started earning £15,000 - when the new system comes in this will be raised to £21,000.
51. This year complaints against universities have risen by more than a third, and this figure is predicted to rise significantly once the tuition fees increase takes effect next year.
52. According to figures by Ucas 673,000 students had applied to start undergraduate degrees this September - about 10,000 more than last year, which was itself a record.
53. The number of places on degree courses has been frozen for the current year.
54. The previous Labour government's target of getting 50% of school leavers to go onto higher education and the expansion in university places has made a degree an expectation rather than desire for many youngsters.
55. Applications are up about 23% for over-25s, suggesting people struggling in the jobs market are going back to education to retrain.
56. The target of getting a higher number of school leavers to go to university has come in for increasing criticism from employers, with the Association of Graduate Recruiters saying: "The focus must shift back to quality rather than quantity." It concludes that the target devised under the Blair government of half of all under-30s going into higher education "has driven down standards, devalued the currency of a degree and damaged the quality of the student university experience."
57. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development joined the criticism as it published a survey in March 2010 showing that close to 6 in 10 recent graduates who have a job are not working in a field related to the degree they studied.
58. In the arts the average extra earnings compared to non-graduates is £35,000 and medicine is £340,000.
59. Halls are safe places to live and in your first few weeks of uni you will undoubtedly meet some friends for life.
60. It is estimated that graduates earn on average £100,000 more than non-graduates over their working life, far outweighing the cost of three or four years of studying.
61. The UK's leading employers are expecting to increase their graduate recruitment by 9.4% in 2011 (following a rise of 12.6% during 2010). This is on the back of a two years of falls as vacancies dropped by 17.8% in 2009 and 6.7% in 2008, however we're still not back to the levels of graduate recruitment of 2007 - the year before the recession started.
62. Convenience branches of supermarkets such as Tesco Express which can work out up to 30% more expensive than a large Tesco store.
63. In the Western World the food we throw away is four times the amount needed to feed the world's hungry, and the surplus production coupled with the landfill emissions from wasted food comes at a huge environmental expense.
64. The most commonly wasted foods are lettuce and bags of salad, followed by bread, fruit, milk and cooked meat.
65. One in three people admits to throwing away food regularly and one in two to throwing away frozen food that's too old to eat.
66. If there are four or more of you sharing a student house/halls of residence kitchen then making your own bread could save you around £1 a loaf on buying equivalent bread.
67. British adults waste an average of £424 a year each on food that goes off before they get around to consuming it.
68. Starting salaries at the UK's leading graduate employers in 2011 are expected to remain unchanged from 2010 levels - a median of £29,000.
69. Due to global commodity driven inflation, food prices are rising fast. Whilst official government figures put this at around 5% a year, in reality core basics such as eggs, pasta, bread, milk and cheese are rising much faster.
    
70. On average, employers received 45 applications per graduate vacancy in 2010.
71. A recent study released revealed that 80% of America's top colleges use social media in their recruiting process.
72. 62% of admissions officers say that students social media profiles have generally helped them get accepted.
73. 80% of admissions officers have accepted a friend request from an applicant on Facebook or myspace.
74. Todays students have the worst emotional health of any student group ever studied.
75. 1 in 5 students felt to stressed to study or be with friends.
76. In the last year students felt: 60% very sad, 50% overwhelming anxiety, 30% so depressed that it was difficult to function.
77. 26% of students have considered seeing a councillor but only 10% did so.
78. Stressed out students are 25% more likely to binge eat at night one of the biggest factors in college weight gain.
79. The biggest causes of stress are academics, finances, relationships, future plans and adjusting to college life.
80. In one study, practising medication daily for 8 weeks reduced stress in senior med students by 20%
81. 98% of students own a digital device.
82. 27% of students say their laptop is the most important thing in their backpack.
83. 38% say they can go more than 10mins without using a digital device.
84. 3/4 of students say they wouldn't be able to study without technology.
85. Daily tech use for students, average minutes per day. Texting 181.43, Search 131.35, Facebook 101.93, Email 58.68, Talking on the phone 54.18 and instant messaging 19.54.
86. 8% of students use social sites to contact their teachers.
87. 13% contact teachers with their mobiles.
88. Almost half of students think tablets will replace textbooks completely in the next 5 years.
89. 82% of American universities have Facebook pages to communicate with prospective students.
90. Less engaged students spend more time playing games, posting photos, checking friends profiles. Whereas, more engaged students spend more time creating and RSVPing to events, commenting on posts and looking at photos.
91. Students who use Facebook while studying get as much as 20% lower grades.
92. The average student visits Facebook six times per day.
93. The most important thing in students lives: Mobile 24%, Facebook 11%, Sex, 10%.
94. The top reason for missing a lecture is catching up from sleep from a previous night.
95. 54% of female students have taken the morning after pill. 1% of these was because they couldn't remember if they'd had sex.
96. 20% of students have been dumbed by text.
97. Eating disorders are so common in America that 1 or 2 out of every 100 students will struggle with one. 
98. More than half of male students mask whiffy clothes with deodorant and aftershave.
99. Women students wash their bras only six times a year on average.
100. The average male student washes his pants only once a fortnight, a study claims. And they often wear socks for up to four days before they wash them.