How to tap into the biggest bursaries and scholarships

Imagine two families with ambition but poor living standards. They have children who want to go to university but are worried about the cost. One young person has been thinking of applying to Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, which offers a bursary of £319 next autumn to freshers with a family income of less than £25,000.

The other is expected to get amazing A-levels and is toying with an application to Oxford, where the bursary for the poorest applicants is £3,225, or to Exeter, where the bursary is £1,500, and young people with really stellar A-levels can access a further £5,000.

These huge differences in the size of bursaries and scholarships offered to the poorest students in the 2009 academic year are revealed in a survey carried out by the Complete University Guide and published exclusively on The Independent's website today .

Related articles

• Bursaries and Scholarships (Excel spreadsheet)
• The Complete University Guide site
• Search the news archive for more stories

The comparison table is unique. It is the only place where students can see at a glance how universities stack up against one another in the provision of bursaries and scholarships since the new fees regime was introduced.

Far too many applicants are unaware of the range of financial help on offer, says Bernard Kingston, founder of the Complete University Guide. "The amounts could make a course affordable to an applicant who might otherwise find the cost of tuition discouraging.

"Many of the scholarships and bursaries are designed specifically to help particular categories of under-represented sections of society. Yet the task of discovering how much aid is on offer and where, from official sources, is acknowledged to be a nightmare."

According to Sir Martin Harris, director of the Office for Fair Access, anything that gives students extra information about bursaries and scholarships is to be welcomed. "Anything we can do to ensure that a higher proportion of students who are entitled to them get them is a good thing," he says.

Published in time for next year's university application process, the table should be helpful to all students, but particularly those whose family income is low. Such students are entitled to a loan to cover the cost of their fees. They receive a grant from the government, as well as a maintenance loan towards living costs. They also get a bursary from the university, but this varies greatly.

As Bernard Kingston points out, the ignorance about the universities' own bursaries and scholarships is worrying. Young people applying to university often don't know they exist, which explains the relatively low take-up rate by those entitled to them.

According to a report published earlier this year by the Sutton Trust and Staffordshire University, only seven out of 37 students interviewed had any clear understanding of the variation in bursaries available. It takes enormous effort on the part of university applicants to find out how the various universities compare.

Now, they can relax. Armed with this table, students can base their choices on the information contained therein. It should mean that bursaries become a factor in the choice of university, with students able to compare one institution's arrangements with others.

The table shows that a complicated and competitive market has opened up in university scholarships and bursaries in the UK as a result of the new tuition fee regime. There may not be competition in fees (only Greenwich and London Met charge less than the full £3,145) but there is certainly competition in bursaries.

Five universities give special help to ethnic minorities, including Northumbria, Keele, Brunel and Sussex. And five provide bursaries to people who have been in care, with Bolton, Brighton and De Montfort offering £3,000. A further five give help to disabled students.

But only two institutions – Aston and the University of Central Lancashire – give help to students who want to spend one of their years studying at a university abroad.

Some universities, mainly the new ones, offer bursaries for young people who sign up for degrees as a result of an outreach programme. In this category Coventry, De Montfort and Oxford Brookes give bursaries of £1,000.

Some institutions are keen to encourage local applicants. Bristol University goes so far as to offer £1,075 to applicants from the city. Some universities are keen to offer scholarships to people studying shortage subjects such as physics and chemistry, engineering and modern languages. And others give scholarships for students who excel at sport. Loughborough is well known for supporting outstanding students and the table shows the awards recently introduced under the new funding regime. The University of Central Lancashire gives sports scholarships of £4,000; Durham of £3,000; and Coventry of £1,000-4,000.

Many universities give bursaries for outstanding A-levels, notably Exeter (£5,000), Goldsmiths (£500-5,000), and Imperial College (£4,000).

Clare Callender, professor of higher education policy at Birkbeck College, says there's a serious gap in the information budding students get about bursaries and scholarships but says that they will have to do more than simply scour the Complete University Guide table: "The criteria for making awards vary from one university to another, so this doesn't provide the full picture, and is simply the beginning of the students' research journey."

Leading independent guide to UK universities