Adding or removing a placement year or study abroad

You may decide to add or remove a year abroad or placement year within your course.

You will need to complete a route change request. Please see the student handbook for an overview. 

What you need to do next depends on whether you are adding or removing a placement/study abroad year:

Adding a Placement/Study Abroad Year

This should be relatively straight forward. You will need to bear in mind that your tuition fee loan and maintenance loan amounts will change if you decide to take the placement or study abroad year after you had originally applied to student finance expecting to be studying at Loughborough for the year.

Please note this information is for UK undergraduate students.

Tuition Fees for a full placement year are £1,850.

Tuition fees for study abroad year are £1,385.

You will normally be able to borrow a fee loan to cover the tuition fees.

Fee loan entitlement is generally limited to the normal duration of your course plus one extra year but adding a placement is exempt from the calculation of the number of years of study.

Any previous years of study at higher education on a different course or at a different institution or repeat years on the current course may affect entitlement.

Maintenance loans are not limited by how many years you have been studying.

Most paid placement years receive a lower rate of maintenance loan.

You must notify your student funding body of your change of circumstance.

    1. Notify Student Finance of your change of circumstance. For Student Finance England, you can normally log onto your online account to change your details.
    2. In some cases you will have to complete a Change of Circumstances form (available to print from your online account) to notify Student Finance of the changes. You can upload the completed Change of Circumstances form to your SFE online account.
    3. The University must also confirm to Student Finance any changes to your course.
    4. Keep checking your online account for any updates (under the ‘Letters and emails’ section).

Any period of repeat study may have an impact on your eligibility for future funding. It is important that you seek advice if you add extra years of study. Simply adding a placement year to your existing course is not normally treated as an extra year of study.

The Loughborough University Bursary is not paid during placement years. However please check if you might be eligible for the Loughborough Bursary for Unpaid Placements (LBUP) Scheme.

If you are in unforeseen financial hardship you can apply for help from the University’s Hardship Fund.

Removing a Placement/Study Abroad Year

This should be relatively straight forward. You will need to submit a route change request via the Student Self-Service Portal. You can find more information about this here.

Financially, you will need to bear in mind that your tuition fee loan and maintenance loan amounts will change if you decide not to take the placement or study abroad year after you have applied for student finance based on taking a placement or study abroad year.

You must notify your student funding body of your change of circumstance.

  1. Notify Student Finance of your change of circumstance. For Student Finance England, you can normally log onto your online account to change your details.
  2. In some cases you will have to complete a Change of Circumstances form (available to print from your online account) to notify Student Finance of the changes. You can upload the completed Change of Circumstances form to your SFE online account.
  3. The University must also confirm to Student Finance any changes to your course.
  4. Keep checking your online account for any updates (under the ‘Letters and emails’ section).

Last Updated: 20th November 2023