3 | Filling in the form

Your personal details

Your name will form the basis of your applicant record, so please ensure it is full and accurate. If you hold a passport or other official document, you should state your name exactly as it is printed there; this will be critical if you need to apply for a student visa.

If you contact us separately to your application, please provide your name in the same format used in your application, so that we can match all enquiries and materials to the correct record. 

Your contact details

You must ensure that we have current and accurate email and postal addresses for you at all times. If your contact details change at any time during the admissions process, you must notify us via the online query system, as the University will need to contact you throughout the admissions process.

Nationality and citizenship

Please include all countries that you currently have nationality of.

If you are not a national of an EEA country (including UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man) or Switzerland, please provide details of the passport that you intend to use to enter the UK. 

Ethnicity monitoring

The University is required under statute to seek and return information about the ethnic background of all its applicants for the UK Government’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The information provided is used to monitor rates of participation in Higher Education by particular groups of people and will not form part of any assessment of your application.

Disability support

All admissions decisions are taken based on your academic performance and potential in relation to your chosen programme of study. 

The University is committed to making reasonable adjustments to enable students with disabilities or long-term health conditions - including specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, Asperger Syndrome and mental health difficulties - to apply for study at Oxford and participate fully in student life. 

Please see our Guidance for applicants with disabilities for more detailed information about how the University can support students with disabilities during the application process.

If you have a disability for which you usually have special accommodation requirements, we very strongly encourage you to disclose it in the ‘About You’ section of the application form. We also encourage you to apply by the relevant January deadline where possible, as early notice will help us to support you in the college admissions process if your application is successful and college accommodation tends to fill up as the year progresses. Please note, however, that no candidate is guaranteed college or University accommodation. 

If you wish to discuss this section of the application form, or anything to do with University provision for such needs, please contact the Disability Advisory Service:

Tel. +44 (0) 1865 280459

Fax. +44 (0) 1865 280300

e-mail disability@admin.ox.ac.uk

Website  www.ox.ac.uk/students/shw/das

Nominated Third Party

You may use the application form to nominate a third party, such as a relative, for the purposes of handling your application. We will not discuss your application with anyone other than you unless you nominate a representative in this section. Please note that anyone you appoint will then be able to give us instructions relating to your application.

Criminal convictions

To help the University reduce the risk of harm or injury to students and staff caused by any criminal behaviour of students, we must know about any relevant convictions that you may have.

For full information on which convictions should be declared and how the data you provide will be used, please see our page on Criminal convictions.

Agents

The University does not have any financial, co-operative or other arrangements or relationships with agents who assist candidates in the preparation and submission of graduate applications for a fee. 

All applicants are required to complete and submit their own application and must provide their own personal details. All of the information necessary to complete an application to any graduate course is available via the Graduate Admissions website, Fees and Funding website and departmental websites.Important supplementary guidance is available on course and college preference for paper applications

Important supplementary guidance is available on course and college choice for paper applications

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Course choice

The online form requires you to select from a list of programmes at Oxford by searching a keyword.

If the course you wish to apply for is not listed as an available option, it may use a separate application process (see 'Exceptions'), such as the MBA, or it may have closed to applications.

If you want to apply for more than one programme, you will need to submit separate applications, along with full supporting materials, and pay the application fee for each. Full details of the procedure for starting a second online application are available in the 'Instructions' section of the online application form

You will not be able to amend your programme choice after you have applied, so please check this carefully before submitting your application.

Full-time or part-time study

If you wish to apply for part-time study, you must:

• Check whether your programme supports a part-time option; this information can be found in the Course Guide
• Either (i) indicate that you do not have any college preference or (ii) select your preferred college before selecting the full/part-time option, as not all colleges will accept part-time applicants

Start term

You may only select the mandatory start term for your programme in the online form.

If you wish to apply for an alternative start term - i.e. other than Michaelmas Term, starting in October 2014 - for a research programme, you should contact the department in the first instance regarding whether this could be supported. Start dates for taught courses cannot be changed.

College preference

All of Oxford's matriculated students are members of a college or Permanent Private Hall (hereafter referred to jointly as 'colleges').

Not all colleges accept students on every course; when you select your course, the online form will only display the colleges that do consider applicants for that particular course as available options.

The Department for Continuing Education offers some ‘non-matriculated’ courses that do not confer membership of an Oxford college. If you are applying for one of these courses, the only option available to you in the online form will be to indicate that you do not require a college place. 

In the form, you may either (i) indicate that you have no preference, in which case a college will be selected on your behalf, or (ii) state a college preference.

You will not be able to amend your preference after you apply, so please make sure that you are happy with what you have indicated on the form before submitting the application.  Whether or not you state a college preference will not affect how your department assesses your application and ultimately whether or not they decide to make you an offer.  

If you do indicate a college preference, any further applications you submit in the same admissions year must indicate the same preference, unless that college does not accept applications to the other programme(s) you apply for. 

If you indicate that you do not have a college preference, you will not be placed at Campion Hall, St Benet’s Hall or Blackfriars, as these colleges have specific entry criteria.

If you are offered a place on a course by a department then you will be guaranteed a place at a college. Please note, however, that this may not necessarily be your preferred college. 

Please ensure that you include details of all qualifications and periods of study undertaken at university level; do not provide details or documentation of your primary or secondary education. 

If your qualification was awarded from a non-UK institution, you do not need to convert your qualification into the UK system or provide an official statement of comparability from NARIC in order to apply; as long as you select a qualification from the available options with “(EU)” or “(Overseas)” in the title, as appropriate, you will be able to enter the result without reference to the UK grading system.

Applicants for full-time study who, if successful, would be concurrently registered at another institution (UK or worldwide) are not eligible for admission to Oxford. If you are registered elsewhere and you are successful in your application, you will be required to provide a letter from the institution you are registered at confirming that your registration has been terminated or suspended while you are studying at Oxford, as a condition of your offer.  Exceptions may only be made where such registration is part of a formal collaborative arrangement between the University and the other institution. 

If you wish to apply for a part-time course at Oxford whilst registered at another institution, you must give details of the course at the other institution, indicating whether the course is full- or part-time and outlining how and why you expect to be able to pursue both programmes simultaneously.

Where required, evidence of English proficiency needs to be in the form of a certificate of an English language test taken within two years of the date your programme will commence. You will enter your scores on this page and upload a scanned copy of the certificate later in the application, on the relevant Supporting Material page.

Please do not enter IELTS, TOEFL CPE or CAE information if you have not yet obtained test results. If you do not have test results at the time of applying, you should upload these to our office as soon as they are available, and they will be matched with your application.

Please give an indication of your plans regarding whether you intend to apply to college or University accommodation in this section. 

Please note that, whilst the majority of the University’s graduate students are housed in the wide range of accommodation provided by Oxford’s colleges and the University’s accommodation office, no candidate can be guaranteed college or University accommodation. 

You must complete this section either by listing the main sources of funding you are most likely to use to fund your tuition fees, college fees and living expenses in the event that you are not offered a scholarship by the University, or by indicating with the tick box that you have not yet made any funding arrangements. Please do not include here details of University scholarships and departmental studentships which you will apply for in the following sections.

You should enter the ‘amount of funding’ in this section for one year of study, or for the duration of your programme if less than one year.

The information you provide in this section will not affect your eligibility for scholarship funding offered by the University, its colleges and departments.

Declaring your funding arrangements upon offer of a place

If you receive an offer of a place, your college will require you to complete a Financial Declaration form to meet your financial condition of admission. This aims to ensure that you are fully aware of the expected fees and living costs associated with your chosen course of study at Oxford.

It is your opportunity to consider very carefully the financial commitment you are entering into, and to take full responsibility for it. If you cannot pay your fees and living costs, you will not normally be able to continue your studies. 

When you complete your Financial Declaration, you will be asked to:

• Show that you have sufficient funding to cover the University and College fees for Year 1 of your course, by providing financial evidence such as a letter from your scholarship sponsor or your bank
• Give your assurance that you are able and willing to meet all University and College fees beyond Year 1, if the duration of your course is longer than a year (no financial evidence is required)
• Give your assurance that you are able and willing to meet your living costs for the duration of your course (no financial evidence is required)

You can find full details on the Financial Declaration process at www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/fees/financialdeclaration

How to apply for a departmental studentship

A departmental studentship is a specific type of funding offered by an academic department, particularly in the sciences, which requires you to apply by entering a reference code in this section of the application form.

Studentships will be advertised, along with their reference codes, on departmental websites. You should also check the closing date for the studentship to ensure that you submit your application form on time.

How to apply for University-wide scholarships

University-wide scholarships offer funding in a wide range of subjects to candidates from countries all over the world. 

Full details of the eligibility criteria, application procedure and decision dates for these scholarships are available via the individual scholarship profiles. If you wish to be considered for any of these scholarships, you must complete your application no later than the January deadline for your programme. If the scholarship eligibility criteria state that you must be ordinarily resident in a certain country, you should ensure that your country of ordinary residence and the dates of residency that you have provided in the ‘Nationality and Citizenship’ section of your application are complete and accurate.

The majority of scholarships administered centrally by the University do not require you to make a specific application, and you will be automatically considered if you meet the eligibility requirements. These scholarships are as follows:

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For other university-wide scholarships, you will need to tick the box next to the scholarship that you wish to be considered for on the application form. If the scholarship is marked with an asterisk (*), you will need to submit additional supporting material together with your application as per instructions in the relevant scholarship profile.

Scholarship applications may be rejected if you do not follow these instructions. Due to the volume of applications received, only successful candidates will be informed. 

Unfortunately, it is not possible to contact unsuccessful applicants or to provide individual feedback; however, once all awards for a scholarship have been made, the relevant scholarship profile will be updated to reflect this.

The University reserves the right to consider any eligible candidates for Oxford scholarships.

Data captured in this section will assist research by the University into the development of funding policies to support graduate students. This may include, but is not limited to, the sharing of aggregated statistical data with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to support a bid for funding from HEFCE to benefit students from under-represented socio-economic groups. 

The information you provide in this section will not form part of any assessment of your application and is not made available to those assessing your application; all questions include a ‘prefer not to say’ option.

The occupation classifications follow those used by the Office for National Statistics; this will enable research in this area to compare the data with other sources. Common examples are suggested for each classification to help you choose appropriately:

Important supplementary guidance is available on the application fee for paper applications

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The application fee is £50 per programme. You must submit your payment in British Pound Sterling (£) via the Oxford University Stores website before submitting the application, and payment must be made for each individual application submitted; you will need to purchase the item "Application Fee for Graduate Admissions" via the Product Catalogue, where it is listed under "Graduate Admissions".

You will then need to enter the purchase order number you receive from the Oxford University Stores, which will be in the format ‘OXF######’, into the online application form.

Applications cannot be processed before full payment is made and applications which are submitted without a valid payment reference will not be considered.

This fee covers the processing of your application and is non-refundable, as we will start processing your application upon its receipt. Please note that the application fee will not form any part of the tuition and college fees you will be liable to pay if you are offered and accept a place to study at Oxford.

Payment may be made by Mastercard, Visa credit card, Switch, Solo or Delta debit card.

If you do not have access to a credit card, some banks are able to offer a disposable credit card voucher which can be used to make online payments. It is also acceptable for a friend or family member to make the payment on your behalf using their card in the online system; the system will request the applicant’s name, date of birth, and programme applied for when each payment is made. 

Applicants from developing countries who do not have access to a bank account and are unable to use a bank card for payment may contact Graduate Admissions for guidance on how to pay the application fee.

Important supplementary guidance is available on how to submit paper applications

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The Application Inspector will check that you have provided all mandatory data in the application form before you can submit the application.

Please note that the Application Inspector will not assess the content or nature of any documents that you upload or whether you have included all the necessary documentation for an application to your course.

You will be requested to check a PDF version of your application before submitting it; you must ensure that all of your documents are present, correct, legible and at the correct rotation. The PDF reflects exactly how your application will come through to the Graduate Admissions and Funding office (with the exception of references, which are transmitted separately via the associated secure online reference system).

Applicants will be sent an automated e-mail to confirm their submission. Please note that confirmation of submission is not a confirmation that your application is complete for the purpose of assessment.

Once your application has been submitted, you cannot replace any attached documentation, or change any details relating to the programme of study, including college preference, so please check very carefully before you submit your application.  

By submitting an application you are confirming that all of the information provided is, to the best of your knowledge, true, accurate, current and complete, and that you will promptly notify the University if any information should change in order to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. You are also confirming that the information contained in your application, including all supporting work, is entirely your own original work, except where clearly indicated, and does not contain any plagiarised elements (for further information, please see our guidance on plagiarism). You will be required to confirm a declaration with your application to this effect. 

For questions of an academic nature about specific programmes of study 

Please contact the relevant department; contact details for departments are available via the Course Guide.

If you have general questions about the graduate application process or about funding for graduate study

Please consult the online prospectus; if you have any further questions, use our online query form or call the Graduate Admissions office on +44 (0)1865 270059 (Mon-Fri 0900-1700 GMT/BST). 

If you have a query or complaint regarding the admissions process

Please see our University policies page for further information.