Official Durham University Postgrad 2021!

Has anyone that applied for the Faculty MA Bursary heard anything back? - especially from the English faculty?

Haven't heard back either!

There’s been a few people who have including myself who got a rejection email last month, so it could literally be any day you hear back!

Thank you both for letting me know. Will just keep checking my emails. I imagine from your post @Manclass98 that the communications for these sorts of things is through email rather than the portal?

Yes they are 😊 It’ll just be an email with faculty MA in the subject line or something similar. Pretty informal email and I don’t think the portal changes at all.

Ah right, thanks again for letting me know! Were the other people that have received rejections from your faculty by the way? I was assuming that individual departments (so in my case English) would be dealing with applications separately but having another look on the website it looks more likely that the Faculty of Arts & Humanities more broadly is dealing with the applications. Did your email say that it was from your specific department or from the Faculty of Arts & Humanities?

The bursaries are dealt with by each department, as opposed to the faculty as a whole. Each department will put forward offer holders for the bursary, to which then the faculty as a whole will look at your application and consider whether or not, so really there’s two ways of not getting it - either you don’t get put forward (which I believe was my let-down, although they won’t explicitly say how far you got), or you’re considered but not successful. Either way the latest you’ll hear is March 23rd, so plenty of time to hear back either way.

Ah right thank you for the clarification. I was really uncertain about the application process (as you can probably tell!) so that's really helpful to know. I also haven't seen on the website whether there is a limit on how many scholarships will be given out? Do you know how many they want to give out? And also, is there like a set number by department or just a general number for applications within the Faculty of Arts & Humanities?

They must have a rough average of bursaries and scholarships they give out each year, but I don’t think it’s a dead certain number. Might be worth checking out their funding page for it because I didn’t check any others out as I wasn’t within the criteria.

Okay, thank you for your reply. I can't seem to find any information on the funding page so will just have to wait and see what happens I guess. Thank you for all the help!

Somewhere online I saw that in 2020 they only gave 10 bursaries, and that was before Covid! So, yes it seems like an incredibly competitive award, unfortunately...!

Hey, I go to Durham rn and me and my friends have also applied for the MA Humanities Bursary but we also haven't heard anything at all.

Thanks for letting us know - hopefully we'll hear back soon. What MA course have you applied/got an offer for by the way?

Hi there! My names Chloe and I received an offer for the MDS Master of Data Science. My offer is a 2:1. I’m currently researching about colleges. Does anyone have any preferences?

Congratulations on your offer! I've been having a look into colleges a bit recently and I think I like Castle the most. That being said, I quite like the idea of being at a college that is quite central and near my department. I also value a good sense of community and college social and study spaces so that's what I'm prioritising. As I am planning to not live in whichever college I end up with, I am not too fussed about the types of accommodation available and the prices of them but I think if you are planning to live there it is something worth considering. Whilst I don't think the prices vary by college, the type of accommodation does so, for instance, if you want an en-suite and want to be catered whilst in accommodation, that's something to keep in mind when looking at the colleges. There also seems to be a couple of colleges that have scholarships, not for as much money as the centralised university ones, but that's another factor that might affect your decision making. I'd recommend having a look at the individual college pages and get a feel for what they are individually like and then go from there.

Thank you that’s helped me a lot on what to consider. This may be a silly question but how do you find out which colleges are near your department?