Looking for cheap halls in 2024? Here are the Russell Groups unis with the cheapest accommodation

Student accommodation in the UK is such a rough deal. Your bedroom is smaller than a Scandinavian prison cell, your kitchen is a microbe breeding ground shared between ten people, and your bathroom only functions 50 per cent of the time. Plus, even the cheapest rooms cost your life’s savings. Tragically, some of the best Russell Group unis have some of the most expensive student accommodation in 2024.

The tutoring platform Edumentors has worked out the cost of living in the biggest UK student towns and cities, including what the average weekly cost of student accommodation in each place. They got the data for the student accommodation from the site StudentCrowd.

These stats include both accommodation maintained directly by the university, and halls owned by external companies such as Unite Students in that city.

Expensive accommodation is the price you pay for the added poshness of Russell Group unis. The halls in cities with Russell Group unis generally costs more than in the rest of the country.

The Russell Group uni where student accommodation is the cheapest in 2024 is the University of Sheffield. The average rent there is just £162 per week. That’s legit less than half of what student accommodation costs in London. Mad.

The Russell Group unis in London (Imperial College London, King’s College London, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Queen Mary University of London) have accommodation in lots of different areas of London, so I’ve just grouped them altogether and worked out the average cost of student accommodation per week in London.

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The cost of student accommodation varies drastically depending on the area of London. The average is £314 in south west London, £334 in west London, £340 in central London, £370 in north London, £425 in east London and £425 in south east London.

Living in London may sound fun in theory, but student accommodation costs so much there that you may have to resort to OnlyFans

So, here are the Russell Group unis ranked by which is in cities with the cheapest student accommodation in 2024:

=20. Imperial College London, King’s College London, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Queen Mary University of London – £368 per week

19. University of Bristol – £315 per week

18. University of York – £297 per week

17. University of Leeds – £268 per week

16. University of Edinburgh – £259 per week

15. University of Exeter – £235 per week

14. University of Manchester – £231 per week

13. University of Glasgow – £225 per week

12. University of Oxford – £220 per week

11. University of Birmingham – £212 per week

10. University of Cambridge – £209 per week

My main argument for Cambridge being cleverer than Oxford is that the Cambridge students had the wisdom to pick the cheaper city to live in

9. University of Southampton – £204 per week

8. University of Liverpool – £195 per week

7. University of Nottingham – £194 per week

6. Cardiff University – £185 per week

=4. Queen’s University Belfast – £185 per week

=4. University of Warwick – £185

3. Newcastle University – £175 per week

2. Durham University – £172 per week

1. University of Sheffield – £162 per week

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• The easiest Russell Group unis to get into in 2024, based on how many UCAS points you need