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Student support

In order to attract the best undergraduate and graduate students, we are able to provide extensive student financial support thanks to generous financial support from alumni and friends. Our aspiration is to ensure that no one fails to complete their degree due to financial difficulty and to provide a wide range of funding for both academic and extra-curricular activities to enhance our students’ experience at Exeter.

The importance of student support

As an Exeter undergraduate I found the support offered to me by the College was the only way that I could take up a place at Oxford.  Unlike some other universities that offered me a place to study, Oxford offered a bursary, which meant that accepting a place at Exeter became the most affordable option for me. This initially surprised me: with tuition fees rising to £9,000 the year before I was due to come up to university, and living costs constantly increasing, I thought that living at home might be the most plausible option. My parents would not have been able to help me pay for accommodation elsewhere. But thanks to College bursaries funded by alumni, students like me are able to fund their degrees with less worry.  The quality of my Exeter experience has been vastly improved, as I have been able to focus on my degree and can afford to engage with the College social life without having to resort to an overdraft.  Exeter’s academic grants allowed me to take up a place at the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, after I secured a partial scholarship from University College Dublin to attend. There, I was able to meet academics interested in my field and conduct the foundational research for my final-year dissertation on Joyce’s works. Thanks to the help I received, my dissertation was among the best pieces of work I produced during my degree.

Ellen Brewster (2013, English)

Graduate Scholarships

Graduate scholarships enable Exeter to be competitive in attracting the best post-graduate students from all over the world. Having an academically excellent and globally diverse graduate community provides a vibrant and thriving community where students can learn from and be challenged by each other, focussing on their studies and not on financial uncertainty.

Oxford was everything I had hoped for, and more; and without the Pathak Scholarship I would never have come to Oxford nor be where I am now.

Sonali Bhattacharjee (2008, Biochemistry), Kokil Pathak Scholar now working on cancer research at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, NYC