Postgraduate Master's Loan

Eligiblity

To apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan you must:

• be a UK or EU national or have settled status (this means you have no restrictions on how long you can stay in the UK)
• normally live in England
• have been living in the UK for at least three years before the first day of the first academic year of your course

If you're an EU national and have been living in the EEA or Switzerland for at least three years before the start of your course, you'll also be able to apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan.

You may also be able to apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan if you are:

• a member of the Armed Forces, or a relative of someone in the Armed Forces and studying on a distance learning course at a UK university whilst you're posted abroad,
• a refugee, or a relative of one,
• under Humanitarian Protection, or a relative of someone under Humanitarian Protection,
• 18 or over and have lived in the UK for at least 20 years or at least half yourlife,
• an EEA or Swiss migrant worker, or a relative of one,
• the child of a Swiss national, or
• the child of a Turkish worker.

Age

You must be under 60 on the first day of the first academic year of your course to get a Postgraduate Master’s Loan.

Previous study

If you have a loan from a previous undergraduate course, it won’t affect your eligibility for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan.

You can only get a Postgraduate Master’s Loan if you don’t already have an equivalent Master’s qualification or a higher-level qualification such as a PhD.

MAs from Scottish universities, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge or Trinity College Dublin are at a lower level than a postgraduate Master’s qualification. If you have an MA from one of these universities, you may be able to get a Postgraduate Master’s Loan.

If you take a Postgraduate Master’s Loan for a course but don’t complete it, you won’t be able to get a second Postgraduate Master’s Loan. However, if you have to withdraw from their course for compelling personal reasons, such as illness, you may still be able to apply for another Postgraduate Loan.

Course eligibility

The course you're studying must be in the UK and be a full postgraduate Master’s course of at least 180 credits leading to a qualification such as:

• Master of Science (MSc)
• Master of Art (MA)
• Master of Philosophy (MPhil)
• Master by Research (MRes)
• Master of Law (LLM)
• Master of Business Administration (MBA)

A Postgraduate Master’s Loan is not available to students wanting to ‘top up’ a lower-level qualification to a Master’s degree. The course must be a full standalone master’s course.

You can’t get a Postgraduate Master’s Loan for certain postgraduate courses, such as PgCert (Postgraduate Certificate), PgDip (Postgraduate Diploma), or where the postgraduate course is funded by undergraduate student finance, such as:

• Integrated Master’s

Your course can be studying at the university in person or by distance learning, and your course can be:

• a full-time course lasting one or two academic years,
• a part-time course lasting two academic years that has a one year full-time equivalent,
• a part-time course lasting three or four academic years that has a two year full-time equivalent, or
• a part-time course lasting up to three years that has no full-time equivalent.

Any student who started a course in academic year 2016/17 then transferred to a university from academic year 2017/18 which doesn’t have degree awarding powers, will remain eligible for the Postgraduate Master's Loan.