Alternative Ways to Fund Your Studies

In today’s climate, it is increasingly difficult to achieve funding for postgraduate research. Many excellent applicants fail to secure funding every year, so if you don’t get funding, it does not invalidate your proposed research. But what can you do to pursue it?

At Warwick, we offer a supportive, flexible environment for postgraduate research, to ensure that as many excellent students as possible can study here whether they have achieved funding or not. If you hold a place here, we would like you to take it up and we hope that the following possibilities might enable you to fund it ‘without full funding’.

Please note we cannot take responsibility for content on external web pages.

Alternative Guide to PG Funding FindAPhD.com jobs.ac.uk PhDs PostgradauteStudentships.co.uk

Funded Projects

Please also refer to individual department webpages for further subject-specific opportunities.

Department of Physics Funded Studentships

Department: Physics

Project: various, covering 6 broad areas of Condensed Matter Physics, Theoretical and Computational Physics, Medical and Biophysics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics and Elementary Particle Physics.

Value: Full payment of tuition fees at the Home rate, a UKRI-rate stipend for 3.5 to 4 years plus additional research costs

Deadline: ongoing

School of Engineering Funded Studentships

Department: School of Engineering

Project: various projects in the key themes of Energy, Biomedical Engineering and Cities

Value: Full payment of tuition fees at the Home rate, a UKRI-rate stipend for 3.5 to 4 years plus additional research costs

Deadline: ongoing

Warwick Manufacturing Group Funded Studentships

Department: Warwick Manufacturing Group

Project: various projects driving innovation in applied science, technology and engineering

Value: Full payment of tuition fees at the Home rate, a UKRI-rate stipend for 3.5 to 4 years plus additional research costs.

Deadline: ongoing

School of Engineering - Project Specific Funded Studentship

Department: School of Engineering

Title: Developing next generation wet processing for Silicon Carbide power electronic devices

Project: In this studentship, the student will develop wet chemical processes for i) cleaning, ii) planarization, iii) functionalisation and iv) porosification of SiC in the power electronics industry. This studentship will expand on work being performed on a £100k grant won from the Henry Royce Institute, with RENA as partners. The student will learn and implement new wet chemistry with physical characterisation (e.g. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy), Raman Spectroscopy or Secondary Ion Mass spectroscopy (SIMS)). Then they will evaluate these processes in electrical characterisation of test devices and potentially in a full MOSFET device, where they will learn semiconductor device fabrication in our state of the art dedicated SiC cleanroom.

Value: Full payment of tuition fees at the UK/Home rate plus a stipend

Deadline: open until filled

School of Engineering - Project Specific Funded Studentship

Department: School of Engineering

Title: Photoelectrochemical Generation of Green Hydrogen using Silicon Carbide

Project: This studentship will expand on work being performed on a £100k grant won from the Henry Royce Institute. The successful student will both 1) develop 3C-SiC materials through nanostructuring the materials via conversion (e.g., SiC nanoparticles, SiC nanowires, SiC nanopores, trenching etc.) and 2) developing the overall SiC PEC system for hydrogen evolution and water-splitting through optimisation of a multi-material system with catalysts.

Value: Full payment of tuition fees at the UK/Home rate plus a stipend

Deadline: open until filled

Warwick Medical School - Project Specific Funded Studentship

Department: Warwick Medical School

Title: Funded PhD project on coronavirus replication

Project: This is a fully funded 3.5 year PhD studentship opportunity in Virology, under the supervision of Nicole Robb (Warwick Medical School) and Helena Maier (Pirbright Institute). The project will make use of recently developed fluorescent coronaviruses and advanced microscopy techniques to visualise the sites and dynamics of coronavirus replication in infected cells.

Value: Eligible students will receive a UKRI-aligned stipend (£18,622 for 2023/24) and cost of living allowance (£2,200 pa). Home rated university tuition fees will be paid.

Deadline: 15 April 2024

Computer Science - Project Specific Funded Studentship

Department: Computer Science

Title: PhD Studentship in WiFi-Vision Cross-modality learning for Human Activity Recognition

Project: The project will develop a WiFi-based human activity recognition system. Physical models (e.g., multipath propagation) and data-driven approaches (WiFi-video cross-modality learning) will be explored. Public datasets will be used and collection of own dataset required. Contact: Dr. Yu Guan Yu.Guan@warwick.ac.uk

Value: Eligible students will receive full payment of fees at the Home rate and an annual stipend at the UKRI rate (£18,622 for 2023/24) for 3.5 years. EU/International applicants are welcome to apply but will be required to cover the difference between home and EU/international fees.

Deadline: 1 August 2024

Charities & Societies

There are many charities or societies offering some support for those taking PG study. Their awards will often be targeted by nationality, profession, or other factors, but it is worth persevering and thoroughly investigating charitable sources as there may well be one where you will fit the criteria – and as these are often very small organisations, they may be more flexible and responsive to individual circumstances than Research Councils. They are very unlikely to offer you complete funding, but you may be able to combine several awards and so go a considerable way towards complete funding.

Although they are often small awards, charitable organisations, foundations and trusts can provide a good source of funding for postgraduate students. We have listed a number of opportunities below, some have awarded students at Warwick sums of money in the past. Please remember you'll need to approach these organisations yourself, and this may require a letter, email or telephone contact.

Partial Scholarships & Bursaries

Find a PhD £6,000 Scholarship
Apply for a scholarship during your first year (PhD study only) - Many scholarships are not just to new applicants for PhD study, but also to those in the first year of a PhD course, in order to fund the second and third years. If you’ve been through the process once, could you learn from that to produce an even stronger application next time? Can you demonstrate new achievements since the last application – e.g. higher than predicted undergraduate or Master’s results, or a publication?
Flywire Scholarship - providing eight $5,000 USD across social justice, global health, global citizenship, environmental sustainability
Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund - This competition opens Tuesday 9 January 2024 and closes Monday 11 March 2024 for applications by Canadian students pursuing full-time, multi-year postgraduate programmes in any field of study in the United Kingdom. A scholarship award is for £5,000.

Student Loans

The government has introduced postgraduate loans which you can apply for if you are studying a taught or research postgraduate course, are aged under 60 years old at the start of the first academic year of your course, and normally live in England.

External companies offering loans - There are a number of commercial lenders who offer finance for postgraduate students. The University of Warwick is not affiliated with the companies listed below and we would recommend researching the full terms and conditions before undertaking any finance. Please note that these are not government loans.

Work and Volunteer Opportunities

Work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (PhD study only) - As a PhD student, there may be opportunities available to work as a GTA. Many departments employ PhD students to teach certain undergraduate modules.

Apply to join the Residential Community Team - At Warwick current postgraduate students are eligible to work as residential community assistants in our halls of residence. The work is paid at and includes an allocation of on-campus accommodation.

Work part time -Bear in mind part time work will need careful balancing with your academic commitments, whether you study full or part time – but Warwick is more realistic and helpful about students doing part time work than many other institutions. Warwick offers a huge variety of opportunities to work part time for the University, from cleaning jobs to working as a Research Advisor in the Wolfson Research Exchange. You can apply for jobs via our dedicated student employment agency, UnitempsLink opens in a new window. Unitemps can help you find temporary work both within the University and in the local area.

Volunteer for Warwick Arts Centre - Additionally, every year Warwick Arts Centre recruits a number of students as volunteer stewards. Whilst this work is unpaid, the stewards are given free access to see many films, performances and exhibitions, so if this kind of cultural experience would be one of your expenses, you could save on it by becoming a steward.

Other Support

Partner/family support - If you are a recent UG or taught PG student, bear in mind that academic fees for a PhD might be considerably less than you have paid for your previous courses: approx. £4,500 for a full-time Home student. If a partner or family member can afford to support your living costs through three years of study, could you afford to pay the fees from your own finances? You might also choose to study part time (see below).

Study part time - For more information on studying part time, see the relevant postgraduate study page.

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