University of Oxford Masters

Oxford offers a wide range of fully-funded scholarships which give the brightest candidates from around the world the opportunity to pursue graduate study. Scholarships cover the full academic range of Oxford’s graduate courses and are open to students of all nationalities.

For the vast majority of Oxford scholarships, you will need to apply for your course by the relevant January deadline. For over 70% of Oxford scholarships, nothing more than the standard course application is usually required. If you fulfil the eligibility criteria, you will automatically be considered.

Oxford scholarships

Oxford is proud to be the home of many prestigious scholarship programmes, some of the largest of which are:

• The Clarendon Fund, one of the largest university graduate scholarship schemes in the UK, is open to new graduate students applying for any master’s or DPhil course. It currently fully-funds around 370 scholars from more than 50 different countries.
• The Rhodes Scholarship, perhaps the oldest and most prestigious international graduate scholarship in the world, is available exclusively at Oxford with 88 scholarships available each year to students from a wide range of countries.
• The Oxford Graduate Scholarships, part of a ground-breaking fundraising initiative launched in 2012. There will be 117 fully-funded scholarships available in 2016-17 across a wide range of subject areas.

Divisional funding opportunities

Find out more about the scholarships available in each of our academic divisions, and the Department for Continuing Education, below.

Humanities

The University is proud to have been awarded a Doctoral Training Partnership, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for the period 2014-19. Worth £14 million, this award will support at least 200 doctoral students and a number of master’s students in a range of arts and humanities disciplines. It adds to the existing range of postgraduate scholarships in the humanities, including the Ertegun Scholarship Programme, which creates a unique setting that fosters dialogue across academic disciplines, cultures and generations.

Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences

There are many different funding opportunities for students studying in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division at Oxford. Funding covering fees and living costs is available for a substantial number of doctoral training programmes. Research Council and other funding opportunities are also available for doctoral programmes in MPLS subjects.

Social Sciences

Oxford hosts one of 21 Doctoral Training Centres accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In 2016 approximately 65 ESRC studentships are available across the Social Sciences. See the Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre website for details. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded studentships are available for the Oxford Doctoral Training Partnership in Environmental Research and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) studentships are available through the AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.

Department for Continuing Education

The department’s Graduate School provides a stimulating and enriching learning and research environment for all the department's graduate students, fostering intellectual and social interaction between graduates of different disciplines and professions from the UK and around the globe. A range of scholarships are available to students on the many part-time master’s, postgraduate certificate and postgraduate diploma courses, and doctoral programmes offered by the department, including a number specific to certain courses. In addition, the department has bursary funds available to assist students on low incomes.

Research Council awards

The seven UK Research Councils are publicly funded bodies that support research and studentships across a range of subject areas. High numbers of awards are received by our graduates in recognition of the quality of the world-class research carried out at Oxford. Research Councils offer full scholarships (covering fees and living costs) to UK nationals and to EU students who can satisfy UK residency requirements. For more information, see the Research Councils page.

Country-specific scholarships

Many graduate students at Oxford receive funding from programmes that are designed for students from a particular country, such as the Marshall Scholarships (USA), China Scholarship Council (China), Trudeau Foundation (Canada), Science without Borders (Brazil) and the Felix Scholarships (India).

College scholarships

Many of Oxford’s colleges offer scholarships but you do not need to read every college webpage in order to find out what scholarships they offer. The vast majority of college scholarships do not require you to select that college as your preference when applying. The college will consider all eligible applicants who apply by the deadline, regardless of any college preference. If you are selected for a college scholarship, we will move your application to the relevant college.