Each year, we provide bursaries of £3,000 to around ten new first year students from the West Midlands for their first undergraduate degrees at the University of Cambridge. We pay the bursary directly to the college the student attends for each year of the course specified by the student on their application form. The bursary can be used towards living costs, tuition fees or a combination of both.

OCR is part of the University of Cambridge and the fund for the scheme comes from our historical links to the West Midlands Examinations Board. For this reason, our bursary scheme is open to students completing their studies at schools or colleges in the Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Herefordshire, Sandwell, Shropshire, Solihull, Staffordshire, Walsall, Warwickshire, Wolverhampton and Worcestershire Local Education Authorities.

Since we launched the bursary scheme was launched in 2004, we have supported over 100 students at Cambridge University. There are some conditions of course, such as achieving a minimum academic standard each year (usually second-class honours level) and colleges confirming continued enrolment.

The window for applying for the OCR bursary scheme 2021/22 is now closed. Thank you to everyone who applied this year.

We will provide a link to the online application form for OCR’s 2022/23 bursary scheme on our website in late February / early March 2022.

The application process is straightforward. Students and their teachers each complete a section of the form and send it to us with a copy of their UCAS form by a deadline in early May 2022.