New scholarship to boost post graduate diversity

Press release issued: 4 November 2021

Fifty scholarships are on offer to students looking to study a postgraduate taught programme at the University of Bristol.

The new Bristol Masters Scholarship has been set-up to help students from underrepresented backgrounds continue their educational journey.

It is one of several drives at the University to improve diversity, particularly among postgraduate courses.

Successful applicants get £2,000 toward their 2022/23 masters.

Professor Judith Squires, Provost and Deputy Vice Chancellor, said: “Over the past decade we have made really positive progress in diversifying our student body.

"But there is more that we can do, particularly at the postgraduate level.

"This scholarship aims to remove barriers to entry for students from under-represented backgrounds who might otherwise feel post graduate learning is not for them.”

Forty students recently started on the University’s Black Bristol Scholarship Programme and the University recently announced it was expanding its scholarship for asylum seekers and refugees. You can see a full list of the university’s bursaries and scholarships here.

To apply for the scholarship, applicants must:

Be eligible to pay home tuition fees
Have already applied to study a full-time masters programme (MA, MSc or MRes) at the University commencing in Autumn 2022
Be predicted/already have a first-class honours undergraduate degree from any university
Meet one or more of the University’s widening participation criteria

Successful applicants will receive the Scholarship after confirmation that they are enrolled on a one-year, full-time postgraduate taught programme for 2022/23

Applications are now open:

Deadline 1 - February 28 2022 (midday) - this deadline is for people who can already prove they have a 1st class undergraduate degree
Deadline 2 - May 31 2022 (midday) - this deadline is for people who could not prove they had a 1st class undergraduate degree by the first deadline. Those who applied in the first deadline but were unsuccessful will also be reconsidered for this deadline

Further information

The University of Bristol has been a pioneer in equality for more than 150 years.

In 1876, Bristol was the first English university to admit women on an equal basis to men; Winifred Shapland became the first female Registrar of a UK university in 1931 and University Chancellor Dorothy Hodgkin was the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize (awarded in 1964).
In 2003, Bristol became the first University to award prospective students contextual offers – a scheme which makes slightly lower offers to students from backgrounds less likely to achieve the standard grades needed to study at Bristol.
In 2016, a pioneering new scheme called ‘Bristol Scholars’ was launched to give local pupils equal opportunity to realise their academic potential. It targeted high potential students who have overcome educational or domestic disadvantage, and was the first initiative of its kind in the country.
In 2019, the University was named a University of Sanctuary, one of just 19 higher education institutions in the UK to receive this accreditation. That year it also appointed the UK's first black female history professor, Professor Olivette Otele.
In 2020, the University expanded its ‘Insight into Bristol’ summer school programme, which encourages and supports BAME students into university.
In 2021, the University unveiled a sculpture of Henrietta Lacks, a Black American woman whose human cells were the first to survive and multiply outside the body. The piece is the first public sculpture of a Black woman made by a Black woman in the UK.
This year also saw the launch of the Black Bristol Scholarship Programme, which provides funds for Black students to study at Bristol.