Some students prefer to stay at the same university after their undergraduate degree and advance to postgraduate study, and I was no different.

However, one of any student’s major worries is, “How am I going to pay for this?”.

Having enough money and finding ways to spend less money has always been a part of student life, and being a postgraduate student didn’t excuse me from these worries. It was unavoidable, so I needed help.

Thankfully, after speaking to the lovely staff in our CareersBU Team, I found out that BU offered a variety of postgraduate scholarships and tuition support to help postgraduate students such as myself.

Graduate discount page on the BU website

The first one I was so glad to discover was the BU Graduate Discount, resulting in a 20% discount on my tuition fees. This released some of the tension I was experiencing, but I was even more surprised when they told me this wasn’t the only fee reduction I could get.

The second option to aid my tuition was the Academic Achievement Scholarship, which gave me a £2,000 reduction from my tuition fees on the condition that I earned a 2:1 (upper second) or higher in a previous undergraduate degree. At the time, I had received my results and earned a 2:1 in my undergraduate degree, so I was super excited that I also qualified for this.

Academic Achievement Scholarship page on the BU website

Even more surprising, I could combine these two reductions; it wasn’t like a gift voucher where I could only use one. (Click on each photo, right, for clearer information from our website).

Here are some helpful tips for anyone hoping to apply for any BU fee discounts, scholarships, or bursaries:

• Head to the pages on our BU website dedicated to postgraduate fees and funding
• Ensure that the funding you wish to apply for can be used for your course (some courses are excluded, so make sure you check this first)
• Check if any of your options have applications and deadlines
• Some scholarships or bursaries are limited, so apply as soon as possible to give yourself a fair chance
• Look at the Terms and Conditions in case you need to provide any evidence to receive the funding.

In a word, I’m so grateful that I took the time to ask questions and find out if there was any help for postgraduate study. If I hadn’t, I would never have known the options available to me and how much they’ve eased my financial worries. Now, I can focus on more day-to-day expenses, such as rent, food shopping, and university supplies. Now I can go out with my friends and not worry about where we will eat or how I’ll pay for my train ticket on a day trip.

Thanks to the BU scholarships and fee discounts, I can enjoy being a student and even treat myself once in a while.

A small note for any UK, ROI and CI students: don’t forget you can apply for postgraduate student loans from Student Finance England if this is your first postgraduate degree.

I hope these tips benefit you as much as they did for me and your student money worries are no more (or at least a little less).

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