Supporting Students

There is a popular image of the Cambridge Colleges as ivory (or in Girton’s case red brick) towers, immune from the difficulties of the real world. It is certainly true that throughout difficult times they have been a place to shelter, and, for the students who study there, a safe place to be inspired and to aspire to making the world a better place. Your support has been crucial in allowing Girton to continue to weather the storm, first of Covid, and now the cost-of-living crisis. We are extremely grateful to you all for this.

Our students and prospective students, however, are not immune to today’s financial challenges. To ensure that the opportunity to join Girton is available to all who are academically talented, regardless of their background and financial circumstances, we need to be able to provide financial support to our students.

This is the aim of our student support initiative. With your help we can invest in these young people who have great potential, changing their lives and perhaps transforming the world for future generations.

Undergraduate Bursaries

If you are a talented student, with the potential and ability to tackle the rigours of a Cambridge degree then—in an ideal world—there should be no barriers to studying at Girton. For many such individuals, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, however, the cost of a Cambridge education is prohibitive. Last year 75% of our undergraduate students came from state schools and in a typical year one in four of our undergraduates qualifies for a means-tested bursary. To qualify for a full bursary of £3,500 a year, the family income must be under £25,000 a year.

Recognising that more students than ever need financial support in addition to their government loans, the bursary scheme was extended on a sliding scale to students with family incomes of up to £62,215. This will mean that more students now qualify for bursary support. For some students this means that even if they scrimp and save to get here (and work every vacation period), they will only be able to experience the bare minimum of College life. Lack of funding means they can often miss out on unique opportunities to access everything that Girton has to offer. All they can afford to do is to study. A donation towards our undergraduate bursaries will help endow more undergraduate bursaries to meet this growing need and will mean that together we can ensure that this support will be available in perpetuity to every student from a low-income family who needs it.

Lewis Wilkinson, Mathematics 2020, Undergraduate Bursary recipient.

‘I thank you sincerely for allowing me to have greater access to the opportunities at Cambridge, with less worry about finances.’

Class Gift Bursaries

In recent years, several cohorts of Girtonians have successfully fundraised as a year group to endow a bursary named for their matriculation year. This means that everyone from a particular year is encouraged to donate at a level affordable for them. Adding together this support from all participating classmates makes it easier to raise the funds needed to endow a bursary.

We are delighted to have now extended this scheme—which has already endowed seven bursaries for the classes of 1958, 1970, 1978, 1982, 2 x 1985, and 1990—to the matriculation years of 1975, 1981 and 1983, so don’t forget to let us know if you are in one of these years.

Student Support Funding

Undergraduates

Girton’s student support grants provide help to students who find themselves in unexpected financial difficulty or facing other hardships. As increases in the cost of living impact the families of our students, their financial support for them whilst at Girton may be less than expected, and this can sometimes leave a student in financial difficulties.

A donation to our undergraduate student support fund will help us to increase this much-needed support, both for students today, and, by increasing the endowment for student support, for future generations of Girton students.

Postgraduates

Over 74% of our postgraduate students are funded by student loans or through their own efforts, which requires them to piece together financial support from various sources. Many of them struggle to adequately fund their fees and living expenses. Many also need to look for additional funding to help further their research, with additional expenses such as presenting at conferences or undertaking research.

A gift to our postgraduate student support fund will help us to extend this support to more students who need it, both now and to future generations of our postgraduate students.

Postgraduate Scholarships

As with our undergraduate students, we believe that the opportunity to study as a postgraduate at Girton should be based on ability, not financial background. And although student loans are now available to postgraduate students from the UK, the costs of postgraduate study are still prohibitive, and are usually on top of their undergraduate student debt. Students from overseas face much higher fees and so find it even harder to manage. To ensure that exceptional candidates can continue to study at Girton, it is vital that we can provide more financial support.

A gift to support our postgraduate scholarships will help us to endow more scholarships for the most able candidates, allowing even more talented students, particularly those from a low-income background, to read for a postgraduate degree at Girton.

L-R: Teck Huat Tan (board member of CCSS), Michael Hsu, Karen Fawcett (1982 and Chairman of CCSS)

Hsu Chung Chuan (Michael), Physics 2021, first recipient of the Girton Postgraduate Awards Singapore Scholarship.

Michael is a Singapore NTU graduate now pursuing a PhD at Girton College with the Many Body Quantum Dynamics (MBQD), Atomic, Mesoscopic and Optical Physics (AMOP) group at Cavendish Laboratory. His current research at the University of Cambridge has major implications in the field of both fundamental physics and astronomy. Michael had this to say about his Girton postgraduate award:

‘I am extremely thankful and honoured to be the recipient of the Girton Singapore Scholarship—it is such a support and has made a huge difference in my life here at Cambridge. Without a doubt, the improved financial stability meant that I had more time to fully focus on my research and lab work. In addition, it significantly lowered my stress and improved my mental health...Equally as important, I also had more time to spend quality time with friends, colleagues and loved ones. The time freed up also further enabled me to pursue my musical, sports and co-curricular interests outside of lab work for a much-needed work–life balance. All in all, the scholarship has dramatically improved my quality of life here at the University of Cambridge, and I will forever be grateful for receiving it.’

Tax effective giving from Singapore. Cambridge Colleges Scholarships (Singapore) Ltd (‘CCSS’) has been established by Girton alumni as a nonprofit IPC offering tax-efficient donations to Colleges of the University of Cambridge for scholarships / bursaries. For further information please email development@girton.cam.ac.uk.

Access Initiatives

Our bursaries, scholarships, and our hardship and wellbeing grants, help to ensure that any student who is accepted at Girton, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level, can participate fully in all the opportunities and experiences a Girton (and Cambridge) education affords. It remains the case, however, that many talented young students do not apply to Girton, Cambridge, or indeed to university at all. We believe that raising the aspirations of talented schoolchildren (especially those whose families have never attended university or who are very debt-averse) so that they might be encouraged to apply to university is crucial in building a fair and equal society. Our access initiatives are not just aimed, therefore, at encouraging applications to Girton from under-represented groups, but at encouraging them to access higher education in general.

Girton is one of a small number of Colleges involved in the University of Cambridge’s Foundation Year, and the ground-breaking pilot project STEM Smart, both of which aim to tackle educational disadvantage at secondary school level. Girton is also involved in several other widening access initiatives which work closely with schools in the West Midlands and the London Borough of Camden. We want to be able to do more, however, and our Admissions team has exciting plans for the future.

By donating to our Access Fund, your gift can help us deliver these existing initiatives, as well as creating innovative opportunities to more effectively target those groups underrepresented at Girton.

The Unrestricted Permanent Endowment Capital

The educational opportunities provided by a Girton and Cambridge education and the opportunities for personal growth can be life-changing. However, teaching by world-renowned experts in their academic field, access to academics undertaking pioneering research, and significant pastoral support come at a cost. To enable our students, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, to access these opportunities the College currently subsidises the educational costs of all our students. By doing so, we ensure that the cost of a Girton education is not prohibitively expensive to the talented students who wish to study here. The bursaries, scholarships and hardship grants that support eligible students are in addition to this subsidy. We invest in each student here because we believe that every student should be given the best opportunity to reach their full potential.

We can only do this because of the income from our permanent endowment, and in particular the flexibility our unrestricted permanent endowment provides. Indeed, everything we do, every part of Girton, from the students and Fellows we invest in, to the sports facilities, buildings, gardens, and grounds, is supported at least in part by the unrestricted permanent endowment.

By donating or leaving a gift in your Will to support the unrestricted endowment you can help us ensure that the exceptional educational experience College offers will be available to the Girtonians of the future. Such a gift is an investment in the long-term future of Girton College, and the brilliant students who study here.