This blog was written March 2020 – please see our website for our current postgraduate fees

Many of us are likely to feel the pinch when it comes to student living, so looking for ways to reduce the expense of university can be incredibly important to improve our financial security. This may be especially important at the postgraduate level; while the average taught Master’s in the UK costs £7,392, tuition fees can vary across different universities and courses with even higher fees for clinical and business courses.

Whilst applying for my Master’s, one of the biggest deciding factors for me was the cost. Having already completed my Bachelor’s, I was a little bit more clued up when applying for courses this time round so I made sure to do my research on scholarships, bursaries and grants. I began by exploring the university web pages to see what scholarships were available and learnt that I was automatically eligible for the Academic Achievement Scholarship at BU; the other university I had applied to didn’t offer anything in this area and I wasn’t eligible for any of their other scholarships. I had initially been torn between two relatively similar courses, but after realising I would save more than £6,000 by choosing BU it was much easier to make my decision! It also felt good knowing that the work I put in during my Bachelor’s was being acknowledged.

I then dug a little deeper to see what else was available, and discovered several external sources which offered scholarships and bursaries such as the Postgrad Solutions Study Bursary, The Alternative Guide to Postgraduate Funding Online and the FindAMasters competition. The processes behind these required a little bit more effort as I needed to complete applications to make my case of why I deserved the scholarship and some were down to chance. Although I wasn’t successful in acquiring any of these scholarships/bursaries I’m still glad I applied as it was good practice for future job applications.

Obviously scholarships specifically based on academic achievements aren’t for everyone, but there are so many scholarships available for various factors such as sports, music, specific courses, experiences of hardship and certain backgrounds. Even if the only scholarships available to you are ones awarded by chance in competitions, you should still go for it as either way the worst that can happen is you don’t get it – but there is the possibility of a big pay-off. There’s something there for pretty much everyone, and it’s certainly worth investigating because it’s nice to get paid just for being you.

Take a look our Bournemouth University website for further information on scholarships as well as their scholarship calculator.

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Scholarships and Bursaries Calculator