The Clarendon Fund at Oxford: Fully Funded Master’s and DPhil Scholarships

Oxford awards more than 200 fully funded scholarships every year through the Clarendon Fund. They cover course fees in full, they come with a grant for living costs, and they carry no restriction on nationality or subject area. For an award of that size, the eligibility rules are unusually open.

What makes Clarendon work differently from most funding is where the decision happens. There is no separate scholarship stage. Your course application is what gets assessed, by the same academics who decide on your place. So the work that wins the funding has to be finished before you press submit, not after.

Here is what the fund actually covers, who it is open to, what the selectors look at, and how the months after your deadline unfold.

What the Clarendon Fund is

Clarendon is Oxford’s largest graduate scholarship scheme. It offers more than 200 new fully funded scholarships each year, and it supports over 700 scholars who are already on course, from around 70 countries. The 2025/26 group was the 25th intake since the fund began.

One piece of vocabulary before we go further. A DPhil is Oxford’s name for a PhD. It is the same degree, just an older word for it. When Oxford pages say “Master’s or DPhil”, they mean master’s or PhD.

What the money covers

Course fees

Clarendon pays your course fees in full. This applies whether you are classed as a Home or an Overseas fee status student, so your nationality does not change what is covered.

One point that saves a lot of worry. Some UK universities charge separately for tuition and for college membership, and older Oxford pages did publish two figures. Since 2019/20 Oxford has published course fees as a single figure covering both university and college services, split behind the scenes on a formula. So there is no second college fee sitting outside what Clarendon pays.

A living grant

Full-time scholars receive an annual grant for living costs of at least the UKRI minimum doctoral stipend rate. That is the national minimum UK research councils pay their funded doctoral students, and it is set fresh each year.

Here the numbers need care. Oxford’s Clarendon page currently quotes the 2025-26 rate of £20,780. UKRI has since set the 2026-27 minimum at £21,805, effective from 1 October 2026. Since Clarendon promises at least the UKRI minimum, the newer figure is the more realistic floor for anyone starting in 2026-27 or later, but the exact amount will be confirmed in your own funding letter rather than on the scholarship page.

Part-time scholars receive a study support grant instead, to help with costs other than fees. It may be a sixth, a third or half of the stipend rate, depending on the nature and length of the course. The exact amount appears in the offer letter.

How long it lasts

The scholarship normally runs for what Oxford calls your period of fee liability. In plain terms, that is the stretch of your degree during which the university charges you course fees.

For a taught master’s that is usually one year. For a full-time DPhil the standard period is nine terms, which is three years, though a number of programmes are set at twelve terms instead. Oxford’s own expected completion time for a DPhil is three to four years. Your course page states the figure for your programme.

Some academic divisions extend a Clarendon award beyond that period at their own discretion. In that extra time only the living grant is paid.

The fine print worth reading twice

Once your fee liability period ends, students still enrolled pay a termly continuation charge. For most DPhil students that starts in the tenth term. The university charge was £632 per term in 2025/26, and a college continuation charge may apply as well. The Clarendon Fund does not pay either.

Some divisions soften this. In the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division the university continuation charge is waived for the first three terms after fee liability ends, except on DPhil courses that already carry twelve terms of fee liability. In practice that means a fourth year is often free of the university charge in those subjects, and a fifth year is not.

Beyond that, the Clarendon funding information covers fees and the living grant. It does not list flights, visa costs or the UK immigration health surcharge, so those belong in your own budget until an offer letter says otherwise.

Who can apply

The eligibility rules are unusually open, which is a large part of why Clarendon is worth knowing about.

• Nationality: no restriction, and no restriction by country of residence either. Scholars come from across the world.
• Subject: no restriction. Every subject area at Oxford is covered.
• Level: new master’s and DPhil courses, full-time and part-time.
• Current Oxford students: eligible if you are finishing a master’s at Oxford and applying for a DPhil, or for a second master’s.
• Final-year students: you can apply while still completing your current degree, and your application is assessed on the grades you have so far.

Two groups are not eligible. Applicants holding a deferred offer cannot be considered. Neither can current students who will simply continue the same degree at Oxford next year.

A limit that catches people out

Oxford allows a maximum of three graduate applications in one admissions cycle, and only two of those can be taught courses. You also cannot withdraw an application later and swap in a different course. So the usual advice about applying widely does not translate here. Three choices is the whole allowance, and they need to be decided before the first one goes in.

The deadline decides everything

This is the most important operational detail in the whole post. To be considered for Clarendon, your course application has to be complete by the December or January deadline, whichever one applies to your course.

A few things follow from that:

• Deadlines differ by course. There is no single Clarendon date. Each course page lists its own, and some courses run more than one deadline, which means applications are assessed in separate stages.
• Oxford graduate deadlines close at 12 noon UK time, which is midday, not the end of the day.
• The application counts as complete only with all mandatory supporting documents and at least two submitted reference letters. A missing reference at midday means it is not in for that deadline.
• If your course also lists a November deadline, applications made by it are considered for Oxford scholarships too, and tend to get an earlier decision.
• If your course has a March or later deadline, applications made to it are not eligible for Oxford scholarships at all. That includes Clarendon.
• Oxford’s own advice is to submit at least two weeks before your chosen deadline, since the admissions team may not be able to help with problems on the day itself.

References are the part to plan backwards from, because they are the only part you do not control. Referees get busy in December. Asking them in September with a clear date in the message gives you room to chase politely, or to replace one if it comes to that. You can track which references have arrived through Oxford’s applicant self-service after you submit.

If you are planning for entry in 2027-28, Oxford’s guidance for applications made during the 2026-27 cycle becomes available from mid-September 2026. Course pages and deadline dates for that intake appear around the same time.

Do you need IELTS, TOEFL or the GRE?

This question comes up more than almost any other, so here is the clear answer. Clarendon sets no test requirement of its own. Every test question is a course question, and the answer sits on your course page rather than on the scholarship page.

The English language requirement

Each Oxford graduate course asks for either the standard or the higher level of English, and your course page says which one applies. The scores are set centrally and are the same across every course at a given level.

Standard level:

• IELTS Academic: 7.0 overall, with at least 6.5 in each of the four parts
• TOEFL iBT: 100 overall, with Listening 22, Reading 24, Speaking 25, Writing 24
• Cambridge C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency: 185 overall, 176 in each part
• Oxford Test of English Advanced: 155 overall, 145 in each part

Higher level:

• IELTS Academic: 7.5 overall, with at least 7.0 in each part
• TOEFL iBT: 110 overall, with the same component minimums as above
• Cambridge C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency: 191 overall, 185 in each part
• Oxford Test of English Advanced: 165 overall, 155 in each part

Which version of the test you sit matters. Oxford accepts IELTS Academic and IELTS Academic for UKVI, and recommends the ordinary IELTS Academic because it costs less and is easier to book. IELTS General Training and IELTS Online are not accepted. The scores have to come from one sitting, so the One Skill Retake feature cannot be used to reach the minimum. For TOEFL, only the iBT counts, including the Home Edition, and neither the Essentials test nor the MyBest Scores feature is accepted. Whichever test you take, it has to be less than two years old at the start date of your course.

A TOEFL problem worth knowing about right now

The TOEFL iBT changed on 21 January 2026. Oxford has said it will not accept TOEFL tests taken from that date to meet the English language condition until it has reviewed the revised test. Until that review is published, IELTS is the safer route. Anyone who has already sat the new TOEFL should check the university’s page before assuming the score will be usable.

You do not need a test score to apply

This is the part that connects back to Clarendon, and plenty of applicants get it wrong. Including English test scores is encouraged if you already have them, but it is not compulsory at the point of applying. Meeting the English language requirement is not a criterion in the academic assessment. If a department wants to offer you a place, it can attach the test to your offer as a condition with its own deadline.

So a missing IELTS certificate in December does not weaken your application and does not affect whether your department nominates you for Clarendon. What it can affect is whether you take up the place afterwards, and test slots can take months to secure, so Oxford’s own advice is to arrange a sitting as soon as you decide to apply.

Who is exempt, and who is not

You do not need to prove your English if your first language is English and you have always been a citizen of and mainly resident in a majority English-speaking country recognised by UK Visas and Immigration. Current Oxford students applying for readmission are also exempt.

That country list is shorter than people expect. It runs to twenty entries, including the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Belize, Guyana and a group of Caribbean countries. Pakistan, India, Nigeria and Bangladesh are not on it, and Oxford states plainly that no other countries count. Having studied in English at home does not exempt you by itself.

What can help instead is a waiver, requested through Oxford’s form when you apply. There are two routes. One is a degree of at least nine months taught and assessed entirely in English, finished no more than two academic years before your course starts. The other is at least two years of professional work in a majority English-speaking country where English was the main language of the role and all four skills were in daily use, ending no more than two years before your course start. Approval rests with the academic department. A refused waiver does not affect the academic assessment of your application, and the requirement simply becomes a condition of any offer.

If you narrowly miss the score

Oxford’s Language Centre runs a six-week online pre-sessional English course, and completing it satisfies the language condition. It is open to applicants whose result from the past two years is no more than 0.5 IELTS points below the overall requirement, and no more than 1 point below on any single component. In practice that means 6.5 overall with 6.0 components for a standard level course, and 7.0 overall with 6.5 components for a higher level one. If the gap is wider, another test is the only way through.

The GRE

Most Oxford graduate courses do not require the GRE. A small number either require or encourage the GRE General Test, and this is stated in the “Completing your application” section of the course page. Economics courses and programmes at the Saïd Business School are the usual ones, and the MBA sets its own rules around GMAT or GRE.

If your course page does not ask for a GRE score, there is no reason to send one. Oxford asks that applications contain only the documents that are required or recommended for that course. If your course does ask for it, GRE test takers can name Oxford as a score recipient using institution code 0713. The equivalent code for TOEFL is 0490.

What the selectors actually look at

Oxford publishes three criteria. They vary slightly between subjects and between taught and research degrees, but the shape stays the same.

Academic record

Most successful scholars hold at least a first class honours degree or the equivalent. Oxford gives a GPA of 3.7 out of 4 as an illustration, and notes that many Clarendon scholars sit above that. A strong master’s result can compensate for a moderate first degree. Individual marks on transcripts, university prizes, your position within your cohort and any publications all feed into this judgement. Requirements shift between disciplines and from year to year depending on how strong the applicant pool is.

Future potential and aptitude

This is judged largely from your references and your research proposal. The question behind it is whether you are likely to contribute something real to the field, not only whether you have done well so far.

Motivation

Assessed through your personal statement and what your referees say about your commitment to the course.

One thing that is explicitly not part of the assessment: whether you have secured funding. Oxford states that your application is judged on academic excellence and the entry requirements alone, so declaring that you have no money in place does not count against you.

What this means for how you write your application

Look at those three criteria again and notice how often the same documents appear. References feed into two of them. The research proposal carries the potential criterion almost alone. The personal statement carries motivation almost alone.

So the practical consequence of there being no separate scholarship form is that your course documents are doing two jobs at once. The people reading them for admission are the same people deciding whether to put your name forward for funding.

There is a second consequence that took me a while to understand when I was applying to funded positions myself. Your department nominates you. The academic division only sees candidates the department has already put forward. That means fit with the specific department, and with the research area you name, is the gate you have to get through first. A generally excellent application that does not connect to what the department does will not travel very far.

When I was sending out my own applications, the documents I reused without changing were the ones that got nothing back. The ones I rewrote for a particular group, naming what they worked on and why it connected to what I wanted to do, are the ones that led somewhere. Clarendon rewards the same habit, because the department is the first reader.

What happens after you apply

The months between your deadline and a decision are quiet, and knowing the sequence makes the silence easier to sit with.

1. You apply by the December or January deadline. No scholarship form. Everyone applying to a degree course is considered.
2. Your department assesses the application for academic quality and suitability, and makes the decision on your place. A course decision usually arrives eight to ten weeks after the deadline you applied to.
3. In parallel, academics in the department decide who to nominate to their division for Clarendon.
4. The divisions meet in February or March to review those nominations and shortlist the top-ranked candidates.
5. Successful applicants receive an offer letter from the Clarendon Fund Administrator, known internally as a CB1. Most go out by the end of April.
6. From April into the summer, individual funding packages are put together, matching partnership awards to scholars. Nothing further is needed from you during this stage.
7. A second letter, the CB2, sets out the funding breakdown. College placements are confirmed around the same time.

Accepting a CB1 means your funding is secure, as long as you meet the conditions of your offer of a place.

The two decisions are notified differently, which confuses people. For the course itself, both successful and unsuccessful applicants hear by email. For Clarendon, unsuccessful applicants are not contacted at all. Oxford is direct about this: if you have heard nothing by mid-June, you did not receive a Clarendon award. A small number of late nominations happen over the summer when someone withdraws, so it is not absolutely final, but mid-June is the point to stop refreshing your inbox.

Can the whole process be done from home?

The application itself is entirely online, with nothing to send by post.

Interviews depend on the course. Not every Oxford graduate course holds one. Where interviews are used, the Entry requirements section of the course page states that they happen, along with the method, which may be in person, by telephone or by video call, and what format to expect. That section is worth reading before you apply if travelling to the UK would be a problem for you. If the arrangements are unclear, the course page lists a departmental contact for course-related enquiries.

An honest word on the odds

Oxford lists “highly competitive” among its own quick facts about Clarendon, and that is the right framing. Over 200 awards a year is generous, and the applicant pool is very large.

What makes Clarendon different from most competitive scholarships is the cost of trying. There is no extra form, no extra essay, no extra reference request. You are considered simply for applying to Oxford on time. That makes it something to apply for, and not something to build your entire funding plan around. Oxford also runs scholarships that do need a separate application, and its funding search lists those, so it is worth checking what else you are eligible for in the same season.

Quick answers

Do I need to submit anything extra for Clarendon?

No. There is no separate form and no additional documents. Applying by the relevant December or January deadline is the whole of it.

Do I need IELTS before the deadline?

No. Clarendon sets no language requirement, and Oxford does not treat the English test as part of the academic assessment. Scores can be provided later as a condition of an offer. Booking a test early is still sensible, since slots are limited.

Do I need the GRE?

Only if your course page asks for it, which most do not. Sending an unrequested score does not help.

How many Oxford courses can I apply to?

Three in one admissions cycle, and no more than two of those can be taught courses.

Do I need to contact a supervisor first?

It depends on the course. Research degrees ask you to give a proposed field and title of research project, and Oxford’s application guide has a section on that field and on finding a research supervisor. Some departments expect prior contact and say so on the course page.

Does part-time study count?

Yes. Part-time master’s and DPhil courses are eligible, with a study support grant in place of the full living grant.

What if I hold a deferred offer?

Deferred offer holders are not eligible for Clarendon consideration.

Where to check the current details

Scholarship figures and deadline dates change every cycle, and the university’s own pages are the only version that counts. Worth keeping these below links:

• The Clarendon Fund main page
• Clarendon information for applicants, which holds the eligibility, funding and timeline detail
• Oxford graduate course finder, where your own deadline, interview method and test requirements are listed
• When to apply and deadlines, which explains which deadlines carry scholarship eligibility
• English language proficiency, which holds the current score tables and waiver rules

If you are putting an Oxford application together this cycle and want another pair of eyes on the personal statement or the research proposal before it goes in, that is the kind of document I review. The services page has the details, and there is a free fifteen-minute call if you would rather talk it through first.