University of Cape Town - Merit and Need Awards for Master's and Doctoral Degrees, 2020

Deadline for applications: 31 Oct 2019

 

Students who intend registering toward a Honours qualification at UCT may be eligible to apply for financial support. Such support, depending on eligibility and selection criteria, includes either financial need and/or merit bursaries.

 

In line with the UCT transformation agenda, in allocating funding for these awards, priority will be given to funding Black South African and permanent resident applicants who qualify for financial need. In the current context “Black” includes African, Coloured and Indian students. “Financial need” refers to students who qualify via the National Means Test for either Financial Aid (where gross annual family income <R350 000) or GAP tuition bursaries (where annual gross family income is between R350 000 and R600 000).

 

General Eligibility

  • Applicants must be South African or permanent residents.
  • Applicants must apply for a full-time Master's or Doctoral program in the relevant department/faculty

  • (i.e. Only applicants who have applied for an academic place via the UCT’s Admissions Office will be considered for funding).

  • All Master's and Doctoral applicants who apply for financial need or merit awards are required to have applied for an NRF bursary, if they are eligible for NRF funding.
  • Priority will be given to students who have a minimum grade point average (GPA) score of 60% for their Honours degree.
  • Students will not be eligible for funding support if they are employed in excess of 20 hours per week during the year of study. (Note – if you are to hold NRF funding concurrently with UCT funding, the NRF requirement is for not more than 12 hours of work per week during the year of study).

 

Conditions of Financial need or Merit award

  • Eligible applicants are funded for two years for the Master’s degree (first and second year only) or three years for the Doctoral degree (first, second and third year only), and must be full-time students.
  • Professional or full coursework Master’s degrees, including MBA’s and MMED’s, are ineligible for funding.

 

Financial need eligibility criteria

  • Information provided on form 10A will be used to determine an applicant’s financial need (the “assessed need”) by applying the National Means Test (NMT) used by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and the criteria used by UCT to determine eligibility.
  • Applicants will be defined as either
    • financial aid eligible, where gross annual family income is between <R350 000, or;
    • eligible for GAP tuition bursary where family income is between R350 000 and R600 000, or;
    • not eligible for needs-based financial support, but may be considered for a merit bursary.

Value of Financial need awards

  • The value of the financial need bursary will be calculated on “assessed need” for the full cost of attendance (FCOA) in 2020 and will take into consideration other scholarships awarded to students.
  • Depending on budget availability, students who are eligible for financial aid may be funded for their FCOA or “assessed need”, which is the approved cost of study (including tuition, and applicable accommodation and food allowances.
  • Students who do not meet the UCT financial aid need based criteria but meet the criteria for a GAP tuition bursary according to family income, will be eligible for a percentage of their approved course tuition fees.

 

Value of Merit awards

  • Merit awards normally cover your tuition fees in part only. Merit awards are approximately R30,000 per annum.

 

For more details, or to apply, visit the call webpage.