The Care-Experienced Academic Futures scholarships at the University of Oxford

Academic Futures is a series of scholarship programmes that will address under-representation and help improve equality, diversity and inclusion in our graduate student body. Up to 50 full awards are available across the three programme streams, and you can find further information on each stream on their individual tabs.  

The University relies on bringing the very best minds from across the world together, whatever their race, gender, religion or background to create new ideas, insights and innovations to change the world for the better.

Care-Experienced Academic Futures

The Care-Experienced Academic Futures Scholarships offer financial support to pursue graduate study at Oxford to students who have experienced being in care in the UK to pursue graduate study at Oxford. 

For the purposes of selection, ‘care experienced’ means someone who, at any stage of their life before the age of 18, and for any length of time, has spent time:  

• living with foster carers under local authority care; or
• living in a residential children's home; or
• being 'looked after at home’ under a supervision order; or
• living with friends or relatives in kinship care – either through a formal arrangement (such as a Special Guardianship order) or an informal arrangement, without local authority support.

This includes anyone adopted from care before the age of 18.

You do not have to meet the legal definition of being a care leaver to be considered for this scholarship. 

Support is being provided by funding partners across the University and colleges. These scholarships are open to applicants to all academic subjects and will provide funding packages to assist with course fees and living costs.

Applying for the Care-Experienced Academic Futures scheme

We will contact you to ask you to apply for these scholarships and complete a separate scholarship form if you have: 

1. applied for an eligible course by the relevant November, December or January application deadline for your course and received an offer; and 
2. you have ticked the ‘care-experienced’ box on the graduate application form.

Please note, if you do not tick the box on the application form to indicate that you are care-experienced you will not be invited to apply for the scholarship, even if you have mentioned that you are care-experienced elsewhere in your application. If you are eligible but did not complete the question on your course application then you can still email us (via academic.futures@admin.ox.ac.uk) by 12th April 2024 to confirm that you wish to apply. 

If you are eligible for these scholarships, you will be considered regardless of which college (if any) you state as your preference on your graduate application form. However, some of these awards are only tenable at specific colleges and successful applicants will be transferred to the relevant college in order to take up the scholarship if applicable. 

What happens after you apply?

All applications for the Care-Exerienced Academic Futures scholarship will be checked for eligibility and assessed by a panel of academics. The panel will review applicants' admissions application and Care-Experienced Academic Futures application and will agree a priority ordering of candidates within the limits of available funding. All applicants will be contacted with the outcome of their scholarship application by email, usually by the end of June. Final college placements will also be confirmed for awards that are tenable at specific colleges only. If you are offered and accept a scholarship, this means your funding is now secure as long as you meet the conditions of your offer of a place to study at Oxford.