Guidance on applying for a scholarship

• Login to PebblePad using your application login details, these will be the same ones you used to complete your application portfolio for your chosen programme of study.
• You will see a new portfolio that will include ‘Scholarship’ in the title.
• Open the Workbook and complete the initial Eligibility Check page. Based on your responses, you will be able to identify if you are eligible to complete the full Scholarship application.

Applicants will be required to answer YES or NO to seven questions related to their financial circumstances.

Scholarship and bursary applicants are not required to apply for a specific scholarship or bursaries. Our Assessment team will review all applications and award scholarships based on the awarding criteria and strength of applications.

Please note, the value of our scholarships and bursaries vary and you will not have the choice to choose a specific source of funding.

The Eligibility questions are as follows:

1. Have you received means-tested student funding at undergraduate level in the last 5 years?
   
2. Have you received any means-tested Government benefits in the last 5 years? (For example, Universal Credit or Personal Independence Payments)
   
3. Do you have a disability or chronic health condition that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do daily activities?
   
4. ​Do you, or have you ever had refugee or asylum status?
   
5. Do you consider yourself care-experienced? E.g. anyone who has been in care or from a looked after background, have lived with foster parents, lived in a residential children's home or has been adopted at any point in their lives?
   
6. Do you have primary caring responsibilities for a dependent or another family member?
   
7. Or have you experienced unavoidable financial hardship? E.g. experienced bankruptcy, have credit arrangements, recipient of former scholarships or bursaries at other institutions.

If applicants answer YES to one or more of the above questions, they will be eligible to complete a full scholarship application. Applicants will be invited to move to the next stage of the application to upload the required supporting evidence.

What happens if an application does not meet the Eligibility Criteria?

If applicants answer NO to all 7 eligibility questions, unfortunately they will not be able to make an application for a scholarship or bursary at this stage.

Those who are ineligible will have the opportunity to provide and submit a short statement to outline why they would benefit from a scholarship or bursary from RCA.

Once we have prioritised our eligible applications, in the unlikely situation funding is still available then we will consider your application. We will contact you directly in early summer if this option becomes available.

You will be asked to provide a personal statement which will help describe your financial status or evidence of financial need. Please ensure you have uploaded the required evidence to support this statement – and please provide translations of your evidence as appropriate.

We ask you to answer the four questions with a 150 word count per answer. Each question is scored out of four based on the strength of narrative and evidence provided. Each application will be scored out of a total score of 20.

Scoring is a blind process, with the applicant’s identifiable data and characteristics not available to assessors.

The four questions to answer are as follows:

1. Outline a summary of your background and financial need? (150 words)
2. Considering your answers to question 1 outline what steps you are taking to plan and prepare for study at RCA (150 words)
3. Outline how you would benefit from scholarship or bursary funding that would support your studies at RCA (150 words)
4. Outline what you see as the positive outcome of receiving a scholarship or bursary during your studies, beyond your studies at RCA (150 words)

RCA scholarships and bursaries are intended to widen access within the College by providing opportunities for applicants from circumstances and backgrounds who would otherwise face significant difficulties in studying at the RCA.

The application process aims to select those RCA offer-holders who would most benefit from the available scholarships. The selection will be based on the applicant's personal statement and the relevant supporting evidence.

Our scholarships provide opportunities to offer-holders who have been (and continue to be) disadvantaged by specific circumstances or factors in their background. Links have been established between different kinds of circumstances in childhood and adolescence and subsequent outcomes in life. Influencing factors can be diverse and wide-ranging; these indicators and circumstances can be articulated through the personal statement together with relevant evidence as appropriate.

*RCA Definition of disadvantage

• experience of discrimination or disadvantage based on ethnicity or other protected characteristics
• refugee or asylum status
• type of school and education opportunities experienced
• growing up in social housing
• caring responsibilities
• having experience of being in care
• social class
• parental or carer occupational background and/or educational attainment
• receipt of state benefits or experience of unemployment (either yourself, or parent, or carer)
• lack of access to professional and supportive networks
• receipt of means-tested, state-assisted, undergraduate funding

In this section, applicants will be asked to upload supporting documentation to provide us with the required evidence for each of the eligibility criteria answered YES to.

Suggested Evidence for each Eligibility Question:

1. Have you received means-tested student funding at undergraduate level in the last 5 years? This could include the means-tested element of a Maintenance Loan, a Maintenance Grant, or one of the specialist-targeted grants such as a Childcare Grant.

Evidence could include your entitlement letter from Student Finance England or confirmation of your benefits payments. Please ensure that the document has your name on it so that it can be verified.

1. Have you received any means-tested Government benefits in the last 5 years? This could include Universal Credit, Tax Credits, Housing Benefits and more.

Evidence could include confirmation of benefits payments or a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions or another official document. Please ensure that the document has your name on it so that it can be verified.

1. Do you have a disability or chronic health condition that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do daily activities?

Evidence could include a medical or diagnostic report or another official document that explains the nature of your disability or health condition.

1. Do you, or have you ever had refugee or asylum status?

Evidence could include a copy of your Application Registration Card (ARC) or permission to stay documentation.

1. Do you consider yourself care-experienced? E.g. anyone who has been in care or from a looked after background, have lived with foster parents, lived in a residential children's home or has been adopted at any point in their lives

Evidence could include social care documents or local authority documentation.

1. Do you have primary caring responsibilities for a dependent or another family member?

This could include children of your own or adults who are unable to support themselves and who rely on you for their primary care.

Evidence could include a Child Benefit Letter, Tax Credits, or another official document that evidences your situation.

1. Or have you experienced unavoidable financial hardship?

Evidence could include bank or credit card statements, credit agreements, receipts from former scholarships or bursaries received at other institutions. (NOTE this question provides flexibility for applications from outside the UK to provide evidence suitable to their home country and personal circumstances, alongside the personal statement).

All scholarship and bursary applicants will be asked to agree to our terms and conditions and before finally submitting their application.

Applicants can be reassured that the Funding and Scholarships team operate in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK Data Protection Act 2018. The aim is to ensure that personal information is used in a way that is fair to individuals and protects their rights.

Information about how we collect and use personal data can be found on our data protection website page.

NOTE: Applicants are able to save their application and return at a later date and time to complete their information. Applications close at 5pm GMT on Wednesday 8 March 2023 and if applicants have not submitted their final information, their application cannot be submitted nor considered beyond this deadline.

Here are the indicative key milestones for the 2023/24 scholarships and bursary application timetable. Please note dates are subject to change.

Round 1

The deadline for Round 1 applications has now passed

• 8–31 March: RCA Scholarship Assessment team review and score Round 1 Scholarship applications.
• From 17 April: Successful and unsuccessful Round 1 scholarship applicants informed of the outcome, excluding shortlisted Donor Scholarship applicants. If we can inform you of the outcome sooner we will. 
• 3–13 April (12pm deadline): Applicants who have been shortlisted for a Donor Scholarship will be contacted and asked to prepare the required additional portfolio information. Those applicants shortlisted will be contacted directly by the Scholarships Team.
• 17 April – 15 May: Donor Scholarships reviewed by external donor.
• From 9 June: Successful and unsuccessful Donor Scholarship applicants informed of the outcome. 
• From mid-June: Grant agreements sent to successful scholarship and bursary recipients.

Round 2

• From 29 March February: Applications for Scholarships open to all those with a Round 2 offer. Those who did not apply for a scholarship in Round 1 are also able to apply in this round. 
• 19 April: Applications for Scholarships CLOSE to all those with a Round 2 offer.
• From 9 June: Successful and unsuccessful Round 2 scholarship applicants informed of the outcome, excluding shortlisted Donor Scholarship applicants.  If we can inform you of the outcome sooner we will. 

The Funding and Scholarships Team will write to all applicants who applied for a scholarship to outline if they are successful or not. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide individual feedback for unsuccessful applications.

NOTE: RCA has a series of Donor Scholarships that will require further information from applicants. If an applicant is shortlisted for a Donor Scholarship, we will contact applicants directly and outline the additional requirements. Shortlisted Donor Scholarship applicants will have until 12 April to submit this additional information.

Being shortlisted for a Donor Scholarship does not guarantee the funding will be awarded. The Funding and Scholarships Team will write to shortlisted Donor Scholarship applicants from 9 June to outline the outcome, following the donor review.

From mid-June 2023 successful students for a scholarship or bursary will be contacted by the Funding and Scholarships Team to sign a funding agreement and to outline how funds will be paid.

The funding and Scholarships team form a diverse selection panel that independently and anonymously score all scholarship and bursary applications.

When reviewing applications the following areas are considered:

• financial need based on the eligibility check in your scholarship application);
• motivation and case set out in the supporting statement (from the scholarship application);
• tuition fee status e.g. UK, EU low fee, International fee
• specific named scholarship criteria e.g. programme of study

Applicants who are recommended for a scholarship or bursary by the panel, will have their application and scoring reviewed and approved by the RCA Scholarship and Bursary Board for final approval.

The Funding and Scholarships Team will write to all scholarship and bursary applicants to update them on the outcome of their application. The timeline is included above.

Please note, for Donor Scholarships the applicant's portfolio strength forms part of the selection criteria. Scholarships are awarded where decisions are made in discussion with the external assessors/board in order to strengthen the relationships with the RCA.

We understand that the scholarship application deadline falls after the date by which you need to accept your programme offer and pay your deposit. If you are only able to accept your place at the RCA with the aid of a scholarship, you may accept your place now without paying your acceptance deposit.

If this applies to you, please email [email protected] with the subject line:

‘Acceptance - Pending Funding Application - ID - LastName’,

quoting that you are fully reliant upon a scholarship and would like to accept your offer pending an RCA scholarship application. Once scholarship decisions are confirmed we will then update our records accordingly, marking your offer as ‘Declined’ if you are not successful in obtaining a scholarship.

Offer-holders who are not completely reliant upon a scholarship or bursary (those who would attend the RCA even if their scholarship application is not successful) should still pay their acceptance deposit within three weeks of the date of their offer as instructed in your offer email.

The Scholarships and Funding Team will not be told which offer-holders have paid deposits, and whether or not an offer-holder has paid their deposit will have no bearing upon the outcome of any scholarship application.

Whilst we are proud to offer a large number of Scholarships and Bursaries, the application process is very competitive and there is no guarantee of success.

We recommend offer holders explore external funding opportunities and we have provided a summary of options on our website by clicking here.

For alternative external funding options, the RCA also provides access for our offer holders to The Alternative Guide to Postgraduate Funding. You will need to register for personal username/password and enter the required pin number.

Login: https://www.postgraduate-funding.com/gateway

Required pin number: 1201

If you have any enquiries or questions about the scholarships and bursaries you can contact the team at: [email protected]

We wish you the best of luck with your application.

RCA Funding and Scholarships Team