About you
Contents
Nationality
In this section we ask you to state:
- your country of birth
- details of the country or countries of which you have nationality.
This information should be correct as of the date that you will submit your application form.
For each nationality, you must enter a start date. If you have been a national of a country since birth, click the 'Use date of birth' button and the form will fill this field with the date of birth you have already provided.
If you hold dual nationality, you should enter details for both nationalities. You should only include details of nationalities that are current.
You are also asked whether you expect to need a visa to enter the UK for study. If you are not sure whether you will need a visa to take up a place at Oxford, visit the Before you arrive page.
Passport details
This section of the application form will only appear if you are not a UK or Irish national. You may use this section to provide details of the passport you intend to use to enter the UK.
You are not required to provide your passport details at the point of application, and the academic assessment of your application will not be affected if you do not provide them.
If you do not currently have a valid passport, leave this section blank. If you are offered a place at Oxford and you require a visa to study in the UK, contact Graduate Admissions with the relevant details (ie passport number, country of issue, issue and expiry date) once you have a valid passport and we will add this information to your application.
For more information about student visas and immigration, visit the University's Visa and Immigration pages or contact the Student Immigration team directly.
Ordinary residence
The application form includes guidance for completing the questions in this section. Please read this carefully as your responses will affect your eligibility for some scholarship schemes.
Current country of ordinary residence
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. This also applies to EU nationals resident in the UK for the purpose of full-time education (see below).
If you have been ordinarily resident in more than one country, give details for your current period of residence and the most recent previous period of residence – but only if that period of residence was during the last six years. Please note that the application form won't allow you to indicate that you have been resident in two countries at the same time.
Troubleshooting
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.
Settled/Pre-settled status
Please indicate whether you hold either settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme and the date when this was granted.
How we use your nationality and ordinary residence data
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.
Equality, diversity and access
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 Graduate 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.
Socio-economic background
Where this information is submitted, it will be used to contextualise applications at the different stages of the selection process for some courses and scholarships which use socio-economic contextual data. More information on the use of socio-economic data in selection process is available from the Initiatives to improve access to graduate study page. Consult the relevant course page to check whether your course uses socio-economic data for assessment and/or scholarship purposes.
This information will also be used for research purposes, to help us understand the impact of our access and diversity initiatives on the rate of applications and success rate for people with different socio-economic backgrounds. Please do not request amendments to the socio-economic details provided in submitted applications after the course funding deadline has passed.
Secondary education
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.
Free school meals
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.
Education and employment of parents or guardians
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.
Higher education
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.
Other indicators of disadvantage
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 for another adult, and/or a dependent child or children under the age of 18. You can find out more about the services available to parents on the University's student parents page.
Declaring a disability or long-term health condition
If you have a disability, long-term health condition or specific learning difficulty (SpLD) for which you usually need adjustments or support, we'd strongly encourage you to disclose it when you apply, or as soon as possible after you've applied. This information will be dealt with confidentially and sensitively, and will not affect the assessment of your application.
Over 7,000 students at Oxford have declared a disability. The University is committed to making reasonable adjustments to enable students with disabilities or long-term health conditions to apply for study and participate fully in student life. Our Disability Advisory Service (DAS) has more information about what we can offer, and what it is like to study at Oxford with a disability.
If you have a disability or long-term health condition and are thinking about applying to Oxford, our guide for disabled applicants provides more information about how the University can support you during the application process.
Filling out the application form
If you answer ‘Yes’ to ‘Do you have any disabilities or long-term health conditions?', you'll see an additional question asking for further information. Please tick all of the boxes that apply to you.
If you don't see an appropriate category in the list on the form, tick the box for ‘A disability, impairment or medical condition that is not listed'. An additional answer field will appear, and you can use this to enter more information.
Depending on the information you provide in this section, you may see an additional section of the application form, 'Additional support or access requirements', where you can provide information about any additional support needs you may have.
If you would like to discuss this section of the application form, or how the University can support your specific needs, please contact the Disability Advisory Service.
Accommodation
This section of the application form contains questions about your intentions for accommodation during your studies at Oxford. Your answers in this section are purely indicative and they will not affect the assessment of your application. For more information about your options, visit our Accommodation page.
If you answer ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Do you intend to apply for accommodation owned by the college?’, you'll be shown additional questions about any adults and/or the children who will be accompanying you. Some of the accommodation offered by Oxford's colleges or managed by the University's Graduate Accommodation Office is specifically suited to couples and/or families. Please note that your response is only indicative and does not constitute a request for accommodation.
While the majority of Oxford’s graduate students are housed in the wide range of accommodation provided by colleges and the Graduate Accommodation Office, no applicant can be guaranteed accommodation.
You can find out more information about childcare options and provision for families on the Student parents page. If you'd like to bring family with you to the UK, information about visas for your family is available on the University's Visa and Immigration pages.
Residence requirements
If you are applying for a full-time graduate course, you should be aware of the University's residence requirements. All full-time graduate students must live within twenty-five miles of Carfax Tower for a minimum number of terms in order to enter for examinations and qualify for their degree.