One thing about student life can be more or less guaranteed – the first week will the most expensive of your entire university career.

During the first week – or, as it’s more commonly known, Freshers’ Week (also ‘Orientation Week’, ‘Week One’, ‘Week Zero’, ‘Intro Week’ and so on) – there aren’t usually any academic commitments, just an endless stream of social events and red tape.

Some universities make do with just a couple of days, others plump for a whole fortnight, but it’ll be an expensive time nonetheless.

There are three functions of Freshers’ Week:

• Social: to break the ice and establish a social life
• Environmental: to get used to the new situation and find your feet (the end of your legs is a good place to start the hunt)
• Administrative: to get you to fill out a million more forms and have described to you in tedious detail everything from how your course will be taught and assessed to what to do in the event of a new ice age.

To get the most out of Freshers’ Week, it’s a good idea to keep all three of these in mind. And because you’re going to be focusing on those three, it’s dangerously easy to just spend, spend, spend during the first week. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible not to shell out a quite disturbing proportion of the money that’s supposed to last the whole year.

• Starting out
• Freshers' week: Where the money goes
• Freshers' week: saving tips
• Settling in

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