About you

Your country of ordinary residence is the country in which you are normally resident, out of choice and for a settled purpose, except for any temporary or occasional absences. It is not a country in which you are studying, working or living on a temporary basis.

If you are currently resident in the UK, you should select either England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as your country of ordinary residence.

If you have been ordinarily resident in more than one country during the last six years, give details for your current period of residence and the most recent previous period of residence. Please note that the application form won't allow you to indicate that you have been resident in two countries at the same time.

Please indicate whether you hold either settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme and the date when this was granted.

If the application form indicates that there is an error in the ‘Ordinary residence’ section (ie the relevant fields are highlighted in yellow), check the following:

• If you have only been resident in one country since birth, make sure that the ‘Previous country of residence’ field is set to the default value (‘- - - Please select - - -’), and that you have not selected a second country. The 'From' date cannot be earlier than your date of birth.
• If you have been ordinarily resident in more than one country during the last six years, make sure that the dates you provide for these two residencies do not overlap, as this will cause an error. Your current period of residence must begin at least one day after the end of your previous period of residence.
• Where applicable, you should select dates using the calendar tool, as dates entered manually may be incorrectly formatted.

The information you enter in the 'Nationality' and 'Country of ordinary residence' sections will be used to assess your fee status (Home/Republic of Ireland (Home/ROI)/Islands/Overseas), your eligibility for scholarships, your English language proficiency requirements and your visa requirements. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you read the instructions on the application form carefully before completing this part of the form.

The information you provide will not affect the academic assessment of your application.

We recognise that the questions in this section of the application form are sensitive. We hope you'll feel able to provide this information in confidence to support our efforts to create a more inclusive, diverse and equitable Oxford. More information about University and College initiatives to increase the number of promising postgraduate students from under-represented groups at Oxford can be found on the Increasing Access pages.

The information you provide in this section will not form part of the course selection process unless this is specifically stated on the course page and will not be seen by anyone involved in assessing your application for the course. Your personal information will be treated in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and related UK data protection legislation. Full details are set out in the University's Postgraduate Applicant Privacy Policy.

The application form provides additional guidance to help you answer these questions in this section.

You must provide an answer to the question ‘With which ethnic group do you most identify?’. By law, the University is required to request and return information about the ethnic background of all its students to the UK Government’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

You must respond to the additional mandatory questions about religion, gender identity and socio-economic background, but all questions offer a ‘prefer not to say’ option. 

The University currently collects a range of contextual data from candidates who apply for graduate study. For some courses, this information is only used for research purposes, to understand the demographics of those applying and of those who are offered places.

However, for courses taking part in an initiative to better understand the context of your achievements and the challenges that you might have faced in your education to date, this data may also be used at several stages in the assessment and selection process.

Please consult the How to apply section of the relevant course page to find out if this initiative is carried out for the course you are applying to, or consult the list of courses taking part (below).

long list of courses to be added

This list will continue to be updated as courses are opened to accept applications. Please check back regularly for updates.

You are asked whether you were educated in the UK for your secondary education. You should answer ‘Yes’ to this question if you were educated in the UK for all/majority of your secondary education.

If you indicate that your secondary education was in the UK, you’ll be asked a series of further questions about the institutions you attended and your living situation while you were in full-time education. You’ll be asked to give:

• the name and full postcode of the school or college you attended during the last year of your GCSEs (or equivalent, if you studied for an alternative qualification); and
• the name and full postcode of the school or college you attended during the last year of your A-levels (or equivalent, if you studied for an alternative qualification).

For each institution, you’ll also be asked to say whether it was a fee-paying school or not. You’ll also be asked to give your home postcode in the final year of your secondary education. If you prefer not to give an answer, you can leave this field blank.

For this question, answer ‘Yes’ if any of your secondary education was in the UK and you were entitled to free school meals at any point during that time.

For these questions, you are asked to provide some basic information about whether your parents or guardians completed any higher education qualifications, and their jobs. Examples of each job type are listed in the dropdown menu to help you choose the best fit.

You’ll be asked whether you undertook your undergraduate degree in the UK. You should only answer ‘Yes’ to this question if you were based at a UK institution throughout your undergraduate degree, excluding any study abroad.

If you answer ‘Yes’ to this question, you’ll be asked further questions about how you funded your undergraduate study in the UK, including whether you received income-assessed support from the UK government.

• If you began university before August 2016, answer ‘Yes’ if you received a maintenance grant rather than a maintenance loan. Otherwise, answer ‘No’.
• If you began university after August 2016, answer ‘Yes’ if you received more than the minimum amount of maintenance loan (England), maintenance grant (Wales/Northern Ireland), or Young Student’s Bursary/Independent Bursary (Scotland) available in your region. Otherwise, answer ‘No’.

You can then indicate the main (over £1,000) sources of financial support (if any) for your living costs you received for your undergraduate study. For any sources not covered by the categories given, you can choose ‘Other’ and type the name of the funding source into the field to the right.

You will be asked a series of questions covering other possible indicators of disadvantage. You'll see a question mark symbol (?) beside these questions on the application form. Hover your mouse cursor over this symbol for additional information. 

These questions include whether you have any day-to-day caring responsibilities. You can find out more about the services available to parents on the University's student parents page.