Bursaries and Scholarships: Some Good Advice

Financial support for students can come from many different places, from universities themselves, to charities, fee waivers and scholarship schemes. But how do you know if you are entitled to any of it?

Here are some top tips when looking for the funding you need.

Get information from those who provide it:

The best place to look for information about funding (scholarships and bursaries) is the individual website of the institution that’s offering it. All the details about whether you’re eligible, what help is on offer, and how to apply will be there.

If you’re looking for information on funding from a charity, the Educational Grants Advisory Service website helps you to search for information on hundreds of trusts that offer funding to students.

They will contact you:

Depending on what you are applying for, you won’t necessarily need to actively look for funding. Universities and colleges will contact you.

This is because the Student Loans Company (SLC) and universities and colleges work together. Details of your household income will be passed on from SLC to the universities and colleges when you register with them.

When you provide your details it is important you consent to share. Otherwise universities and colleges will have to contact you and ask, and this might mean you won’t get financial support as quickly or at all.

Read the Small Print:

Any university or college in England offering degree courses costing £6,000+ has to make extra arrangements to offer bursaries, summer schools and outreach programmes to encourage applications from students from all backgrounds to go into higher education. These are included and published in an ‘access agreement’ before September of each year. You can use these agreements to find out what funding a university will be offering to new students.

You can find out about access agreements here. You will need to look through the access agreements carefully, no two look the same!

Knowing what you what you want to study helps:

You can search and compare available schemes from different universities, colleges, charities and councils using websites such as EGAS,  Scholarship Search, Student Cashpoint and Unigrants
.


The majority of scholarship and bursary schemes are awarded by universities and colleges themselves, so it is helpful if you have got an idea of what you want to study, or where.

Source: Student Times

Image: Money, Flickr