Old Members' Trust Bursary Scheme

Univ is committed to ensuring that every generation of students who come here can focus on their academic studies and get the most out of College life without any anxiety about making the financial sums add up. Our students benefit from one of the most generous financial support packages for undergraduates anywhere in the UK.

For those who enter the College in October 2011, we hope to offer bursaries to all UK undergraduate students whose annual household incomes were below the level at which government maintenance grant support is provided (£50,020), and who applied for support under the scheme. This extends beyond the government thresholds for maintenance grant support.

How much will living in Oxford cost?

We estimate that the annual cost of living in Oxford (including rent, food, travel and entertainment costs) in 20011-12 will be £7,300, based on three terms (174 days) of residence in College accommodation. People often think that living and studying in Oxford is more expensive than other cities. We think that the various sources of financial support available means that this isn’t the case.

How will I pay for this?

There are three sources of funding available to all students who come to Oxford:

1. Government support via the Student Loan Company: maintenance grants, maintenance loans, and tuition fee loans.

2. Oxford Bursaries which are funded jointly by the colleges and the University.

3. There is the expectation that parents or guardians will provide some level of support. The government makes some assumptions about how much this should be, based on ‘residual household income’

What if the funding from these three sources doesn’t add up to £7,300?

We expect students to take advantage of all the financial support that is available to them. But we recognise that, having done this, some students may still not have enough to meet the cost of living and so for students from households with annual incomes lower than the grant support threshold we will fill the gap with an Old Members’ Trust Bursary.
Is there any other support available from the College?

There are two other ways in which the College will be able to help.

1. The government’s student support arrangements, added to the Oxford Opportunity Bursaries, mean that UK students with household incomes lower than about £34,000 will already have access to more than the £7,300 annual cost of living in Oxford. These students may apply for support from the Old Members’ Trust Bursary scheme, which will help meet living costs during the Christmas and Easter vacations, therefore allowing students to spend more time during these relatively short vacations on their academic work.

2. Both UK and non-UK Students who run into unexpected financial hardship are eligible to apply to the College for an award from the Student Support Fund. The College has a very generous fund for this purpose.
How can the College afford these bursaries?
The College can afford to offer such generous levels of support because former students (known as Old Members) have donated money over many years to help students meet the costs of studying and living in Oxford. This money is looked after by the Old Members’ Trust, which takes decisions about the best sort of bursary schemes to offer. One of the other goals of the Old Members’ Trust is to encourage pupils to apply to Univ from schools and communities that have not traditionally sent students to Oxford. Thanks to the generosity of two Old Members in particular, we have additional bursaries – the Tacchi-Fischer awards – which are made to students from schools that have not had a strong record of sending students to Oxford over the last five years.