After-selection tracker
Use this if you are waiting or have a CB1. Planning tool only — not an Oxford decision.
Planning tool only. Not an Oxford or Clarendon Fund decision. Combined tracker: checklist.
If you are offered the award
CB1, then a quiet summer, then CB2.
Official timeline: academics in your field assess the application; in parallel they decide whom to nominate for Clarendon. Divisions (and Continuing Education) meet in February or March. Once the shortlist is confirmed, the Clarendon Fund Administrator contacts successful applicants with a scholarship offer letter — the CB1.
Most initial offers are sent by the end of April. If you are offered and you accept, official wording is that funding is now secure as long as you meet the conditions of your offer of a place to study at Oxford. Unsuccessful applicants receive nothing. If you have not heard by mid-June, assume you were not awarded.
What to do in the first week of a CB1
- 1. Read the duration and the conditions. The letter should state how long the scholarship lasts. That is usually the period of fee liability. If a division is offering an extra living-grant year, it should appear here or in the later CB2. Meet every academic condition on your Oxford offer (degree result, English language, any financial declaration the University still requires).
- 2. Accept through the route the letter names. Do not assume a verbal yes to a supervisor counts. Do not resign a job or serve notice until the acceptance is recorded and your Oxford place is still firm.
- 3. Do not expect a funding breakdown on day one. Official pages say that from April into the summer, partnership awards are matched. No further information is required from you for that matching. The CB2 then sets out the funding arrangements and confirms final college placement alongside those awards.
College, visa, and arrival
College preference on the original Oxford form is a preference. Partnership awards often determine the college that is finally confirmed on the CB2. Wait for that letter before you tell the world you are “at Balliol” or anywhere else.
A Student visa and the Immigration Health Surcharge are UK government processes, not Clarendon processes. Use the University’s current visa pages and the official Home Office guidance for the year you will enter. This handbook will not invent CAS issuance weeks or IHS amounts. Ask your department or the University visa team if the CB1 is enough evidence of funding while you wait for the CB2 — many offer holders need a formal funding letter for the CAS, and the CB1 is designed to establish that the award exists.
Budget using the last published living-grant floor (at least £20,780 for full-time scholars in 2025–26) only as a placeholder until the CB2 and the current-year Clarendon page give you a number. Continuation charges, if you later overrun a DPhil, remain your problem.
The community you are joining
Official Clarendon pages emphasise the scholar community as much as the money: more than 200 new scholars a year, about 700 on course, about 70 nations, a 25th intake celebrated in 2025/26, and more than 3,400 alumni since 2001. Events and interdisciplinary gatherings are part of the Fund’s identity. They are not a leadership programme with compulsory attendance of the Weidenfeld kind, and they are not a Rhodes House residential culture. They are an academic cohort spread across colleges and departments.
If you were not awarded: you may still have an Oxford place. Look at departmental studentships, college awards, and national schemes. Clarendon silence in June is not an Oxford rejection.
Official timeline
Read the University’s own allocation page before you interpret a quiet inbox.
Scholarship timeline