Applications - EU

EU APPLICANTS (ie ordinarily resident in a EU country other than the UK)

For guidance on your status as a home, EU or overseas/international student please see the relevant pages of the Graduate Studies Prospectus, available at: http://www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/fees/information/feestatus.html

Applications for postgraduate study within the Department of Materials are all processed centrally through the Oxford University Graduate Admissions Office. Please find below details of how to apply for a DPhil/MSc degree.

GRADUATE STUDIES PROSPECTUS

The University graduate studies prospectus can be viewed at the following website address http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html.

DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS GRADUATE STUDENT ADMISSIONS CRITERIA

Your attention is drawn to our Graduate Student Admissions Criteria, available at: http://www.materials.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate/admissionscriteria.html.

FEES

The majority of home students are fully or partially funded either by one of the UK Research Councils and/or by industry, or fully funded by European Commission of European Research Council. Some EU students obtain scholarships from their own Governments or from charitable/edicational foundations in their home countries.

For guidance only, fees for 2012-13 are as follows (we await publication by the Collegiate University of the fees for subsequent years – for further information on fees and living costs for 2013/14 see the Graduate Prospectus or the webpages at: http://www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/fees/)

University fees (2012-13) = £3,828
College fees (2012-13) = £2,532

For the academic year 2012-13, it is estimated that a single student spending 12 months in Oxford, and living in college accommodation, would need a minimum of £12,900 to cover living expenses, excluding the cost of travel to and from Oxford. For a DPhil programme full fees are payable for 3 years and a continuation fee thereafter, and we advise applicants to budget for 3.5 years, although some students do finish within 3 years.

Thus, if you are to support yourself, you will need a minimum of approximately £41,000 to cover two years of study for a MSc (by research) or £71,000 to cover three and a half years of study for a DPhil.

Please note that you will need to be able to provide evidence that you have enough funds for the entire period of study.

SCHOLARSHIPS & STUDENTSHIPS

EU students are eligible for UK research council sponsored DTA studentships, but normally only to cover their fees; thus EU students who are offered a fees-only studentship must fund living costs of at least £12,900 per year from their own resources. At the time of writing the EPSRC permits the University to use up to 10% of our Doctoral Training Grant to award full studentships (fees and living costs) to EU students – for Materials this equates up to one studentship per year. An exception to this is for EU nationals who have spent the previous three years in the UK undertaking undergraduate study and therefore meet the residency requirements for full postgraduate studentship support which includes living costs. In addition we usually have available a number of EPSRC Industrial CASE studentships (fees only for EU students unless you qualify under the ‘undergraduate’ exception as described above), EPSRC project studentships and industrially funded project studentships. Details are published on our website, as described below under ‘research topics’.

Overall though, in any one year we have relatively few fully-funded opportunities for EU students, and the limited number of scholarships are extremely competitive, being awarded only to the top students in any country for a given year. To be successful in a scholarship competition, normally you would need to be at the top of your year and have some independent evidence of your excellence such as national prizes or awards. Further information about Scholarships can be found on the website at http://www.ox.ac.uk/feesandfunding/scholarships/university/ where an Oxford funding search for scholarships is also available together with details about applying. Individual colleges also offer a number of scholarships for which Materials applicants are eligible – please see the individual college webpages or the scholarship webpage for details, taking care to note the deadlines for such applications.

APPLICATION

If you wish to apply to the Department, you will need to complete the standard University application form, which can be found on the University’s admissions website at http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html. You may also wish to take a look at the “Applying for Graduate Study” section at http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/apply/index.html. Having first carefully read the application guide you should apply using the online application form. If you have a problem with using the online form, please contact graduate.admissions@admin.ox.ac.uk. All applications require the payment of a £50 application fee.

Applicants who are also entering separate scholarship competitions must ensure that their University application is submitted in time. The Department of Materials strongly advises scholarship applicants to apply to the University in the first application field (closing date - 16 November 2012) although applicants who apply in the second field (closing date 18 January 2013) will also be considered for scholarships.

COLLEGE CHOICE

On the graduate application form, you may choose to either (i) indicate that you have no college 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 choice after submitting your application. Whether or not you state a college preference will not affect the Department’s assessment of your application. For further information, please refer to the Application Guide at http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/apply/application_guide.html.

RESEARCH TOPICS

When completing the application form, under the ‘Supporting Materials’ section entitled ‘statement of purpose/research proposal’, you must list in order of preference up to six preferred research topics/supervisors. This information can be found on the Department’s website http://www.materials.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate.html. Please select from the menus: ‘projects available’. In this part of the application you should also include a short statement (up to 400 words) to outline your research interests and to indicate the rationale behind your choice of projects. We do not require a research proposal.

On the website mentioned above we describe available projects in two categories, ‘funded projects (subject to contract)’ and ‘other projects’. Generally, the projects do not have specific deadlines, as we intend to consider applicants within the University of Oxford’s Graduate Admissions standard application fields. Some of the descriptions on this website are of projects that carry earmarked funding and in these cases the eligibility of home, EU and overseas applicants is indicated. New projects are added from time-to-time, so please review the list regularly.

CLOSING DATES

Until the middle of March applications will be considered in three fields, as advertised in the Oxford University Graduate Studies Prospectus. Deadlines for the receipt of fully completed applications and references are: 16 November 2012, 18 January 2013 and 8 March 2013. Applications received after 8 March will be considered on an individual basis and may be submitted at any time. Overseas or scholarship applicants are strongly advised to apply in the November field, home/EU applicants in the January field. In addition, project studentships with specific closing dates may be advertised on our website.

FUNDING & PLACES

Please note that funding and places may be exhausted after the first two application fields: applications received after 18 January 2013 will be considered only if places and/or funded projects remain unfilled. We expect to make a small number of offers, to outstanding candidates, following evaluation of the November applications. The remaining good candidates from November will be considered automatically in January, along with the new applicants for that deadline, and we normally expect to offer the majority of available places following evaluation of the January applications.

One or two EPSRC DTA studentships may be offered to world-class applicants (those of similar quality to successful Clarendon Scholarship applicants) following evaluation of the November applications, but we normally expect to award the majority following evaluation of the January applications. Prior to final ranking, interviews will be held for all shortlisted applicants eligible for DTA awards. We do not assign Departmental DTA studentships to specific projects unless this is advertised in advance on our website. Overall there are many more projects advertised in the 'other projects' catagory than the number of DTA studentships we have available. Hence, in a given year, some of the projects earmarked funding may be designated as ineligible for DTA funding. Normally the most able and suitable applicants, as judged by our Graduate Admissions Criteria, are offered the awards; normally subject to a limitation of no more than one DTA studentship per supervisor per year.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

It is very important that at the earliest possible opportunity you take steps to meet the University’s standard minimum English language requirement http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/apply/internat_students.html.html. If you have yet to achieve attain this minimum level any offer of a place we may make to you will be conditional on your achieving the standard minimum requirement. If you do not meet the conditions of your offer by the deadline we set, normally our offer will lapse.

Please note that it can take up to three months to obtain an examination date for IELTS or TOEFL, so we strongly recommend all applicants who need an English test to apply for one at the earliest opportunity and preferably sufficiently in advance that you would have time to obtain a date for a retake examination should this be necessary. In this respect please note also that we require not only a minimum overall score in the English test but also minimum scores in the individual components of the tests.

Please bear this in mind when choosing your start date on your application form – if in doubt please consult our Graduate Studies Secretary graduate.studies@materials.ox.ac.uk.