This week I completed and sent off my student loans application nice and early mainly because of this quote.

Early is on time, on time is late, late is unacceptable.

That and I'm told the earlier you send in the application the more likely you are to get your loan on time. Also since my college always leaves things to the last minute I took my own prerogative and did it myself already.

I was quite surprised at how easy the form was to complete; considering I'm basically asking for £8,500 when you take in the loans and grants in to account. The hardest part of the form is sending off my birth certificate and and Declaration of Identity form; and that's only hard because I have to use a pen, paper and snail mail.

I am quite pleased with the governments approach to student loans. Making it all web based puts students in a place they are familiar with and makes it all so much easier to process. The online form also makes it impossible to lose the form. Although it does open up possibility of forgetting your password or secret question.

Talking of passwords and secret questions, their login form is really odd. Like, really really weird. To login you need to enter your ID number, your password and the answer to your secret question. I guess they did it like this because we're asking to borrow thousands of pounds. In hindsight it's probably a better idea that just leaving it down to a password.

Overall the form didn't take that long to fill in. It wasn't as painful as I had expected it to be and now I can focus on college work while I wait to hear back from the Student Loans Company.