Clarendon Fund Scholarships

Who can apply

Applying for a new full-time or part-time Master's or DPhil course at Oxford by the December or January admissions deadline for that course; automatic consideration, no separate scholarship application
Open to all subject areas; selection criteria vary by subject and between taught and research degrees
Applicants holding a deferred graduate offer, or current Oxford students continuing the same degree into the next year, are not eligible
No restriction by nationality or country of ordinary residence; nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar or Sudan should separately check the UK government's current "visa brake" policy before applying, since it can block a Student visa application regardless of any Oxford offer or Clarendon scholarship already secured

Automatic consideration is the whole point

The mechanism is the whole point of this entry. There is no separate Clarendon application and no separate Clarendon deadline. Apply for your Master’s or DPhil course by that course’s own December or January admissions deadline and you are automatically considered, nothing further to submit. Miss your course’s funding deadline and you can often still be admitted, just no longer in the running for Clarendon, so the date that matters is the one on your specific Oxford course page, not a date published anywhere on the Clarendon site itself.

What the money covers, and where it stops

Coverage is genuinely broad: course fees in full, for Home and Overseas fee status alike, plus a living-expenses grant pegged to at least the UKRI minimum doctoral stipend rate, at least £20,780 a year in 2025-26, for the period of fee liability on a scholar’s course. That last phrase is worth reading twice, since fee liability on a DPhil is often shorter than the time it actually takes to finish, and any continuation charges after that period fall outside what Clarendon pays. Part-time scholars get a different structure entirely: a study support grant worth a sixth, a third, or half of the UKRI rate depending on the course, and for part-time courses with a modular fee structure, the scholarship pays specific compulsory fees rather than a flat grant, covering the minimum number of required modules but not any extra ones taken voluntarily. Travel is not mentioned on either official page, so it is left out of what this entry claims is covered.

Genuinely open on nationality, with one live UK-wide caveat

Over 200 new scholarships go out each year across every subject area at Oxford, with no restriction on field of study and, in Oxford’s own words, scholars arriving “from the USA to Australia, Venezuela to Vietnam and from Norway to Nigeria.” The one hard exclusion is procedural rather than personal: applicants who already hold a deferred graduate offer, or current Oxford students continuing the same degree into next year, are not eligible. Because nationality genuinely isn’t restricted here, it’s worth flagging a separate, UK government-wide issue rather than anything specific to Clarendon: nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar or Sudan should check the current status of the UK’s “visa brake” policy on gov.uk before applying, since it has refused Student visa applications made from outside the UK by nationals of those four countries since 26 March 2026, regardless of any Oxford offer or Clarendon scholarship already secured.

A quarter-century of funding, marked by its 25th intake

Clarendon marked its 25th intake of scholars in the 2025/26 academic year, dating the fund’s first cohort to 2001. It now supports more than 700 on-course scholars from around 70 nations at any one time, a scale that puts it among the largest single funding sources at Oxford. If you’re weighing Clarendon against another major Oxford graduate scholarship, the Oxford-Pershing Square Graduate Scholarships run alongside it as a separate, smaller-cohort award with its own eligibility criteria, worth checking in case you qualify for both and can compare offers.