I put in my application as soon as the server went live and heard back within a few days that I had made it through.
Fabulous! I thought, a solid chance to chase that awesome dream.
To give you context, I am not your average applicant. I have 'ok' grades and no degree. I do, however have a serious wealth of leadership, critical incident and conflict resolution experience. The one thing I was really bad at in my student years was - money. Through silly life choices I put myself into a veritable black hole of finance taking me over a decade to fight my way out of. So now, I want to know exactly what I am letting myself in for first.
This is where I urge caution. This recruitment campaign is not as rosey as it sounds. You must bear in mind both Virgin & CTC are Businesses...the purpose of their existence is to make profit for shareholders and owners.
I did a fair bit of digging around - looking into the fine print. Like many of you (I presume) I don't have a spare £119k rocking around in spare change behind the sofa. I do however, own my own home on a mortgage, I have a family, overheads and financial commitments. So the funding was a very VERY important part of this decision for me.
Here is the 'recommended' BBVA finance package;
Application fees £1900 (Non returnable of course).
Security Bond £109,000.
Subsistence allowance for 2 years £10,000.
Total Loan Amount = £119,000
Interest total is 4.1% VARIABLE over 10 YEARS.
Total Cost of Finance Approx. £26,257.70 - not too bad, I can live with that.
Now add 2 years of no income (Not a problem if you're not employed anyway, but for me a big deal)
So - by these numbers - you will exit training school with a deficit of at LEAST £145,257.70. (IF you exit training school successfully - if not you are in serious financial doo doo, because hey...life sometimes chucks big stinking lemons at you)
Virgin will NOT pay any interest accumulated - only the security bond over the next 7 years.
Now the Critical bit - the red letters. The small print says "3% over Bank of England base rate" and in very little letters says "Variable".
Now that bit scares me. Why? We have seen a historically low interest rate over the last few years, great for people with loans and mortgages - bad for savers.
That won't stay like that, and with the change in economic climate, and the BoE indicating that rates WILL go up in the near future - that 'Variable' element makes a HUGE difference. The clincher is, they have 10 Years of your finance agreement to creep that rate up.
For arguments sake, lets presume the worst and wack up that rate...remember it was only a couple of generations ago that it hit around 16%...
Just a 5% difference changes your overall cost from £26,270 to £60,666 - an apt number (Of course it depends when and how much you have left to pay).
You can't even pay it off early without penalties being imposed.
I am in no way saying don't do it - I am saying make sure that the numbers work out for you - that you are seriously comfortable to take that huge financial commitment on, and ultimately risking either your, or your parents home in the process.
Hey, if you don't get VAA - there's always the CTC Wings programme!
