Go Abroad Fund eligibility criteria
The Go Abroad Fund provides financial support for students to undertake a short-term international experience abroad over the summer.
Applications are now closed.
Applications will open on Monday 22 January 2024 (12pm GMT) and will close on Friday 8 March 2024 (12pm GMT).
In order to be eligible for the funding, your proposed international activity must:
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Take place outside of the UK
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Proposed destination and activity must be deemed safe. Find out about country-specific safety information:
Visit the FCDO Foreign Travel Advice Website
- Take place entirely between (or including) 24 May and 31 August 2024 (if your activity falls outside of these dates, you are not eligible for funding)
- Be a minimum duration of 7 days (which can include travel days)
- Be educational either academically, professionally, or personally. It does not have to be related to your degree programme.
- NOT be a mandatory element of your degree programme
- NOT be credit-bearing
- NOT take place in your registered country of domicile
Your activity must have an educational component. We are unable to fund activities which are a mandatory part of a student's degree programme or are credit-bearing. Activities which take place in a student's registered country of domicile will also not be eligible.
In order to be eligible for the funding, you must be:
- registered at the University of Edinburgh and enrolled in studies leading to a recognised degree or another tertiary level qualification (up to and including the level of doctorate), or graduating with a University of Edinburgh degree in summer 2024
- you do not need to be a UK national to be eligible, however, you must have a UK bank account in order to be eligible, as this is where we will transfer the funding
- Widening Participation students will have priority access to available funding and where successful, will generally receive larger amounts of funding. We work directly with the Widening Participation and the Scholarships teams to determine who is eligible for Widening Participation funding.
Candidates will need to submit an application. The application will include your personal details and your proposed activity details. It will also include a personal statement.
Within their personal statement, successful candidates will need to:
- Present a well-researched and coherent proposal for the international activity, explaining what they will be doing on their activity
- Demonstrate strong motivation for undertaking an international experience
- Show the extent to which they will benefit (academically and personally) from both the funding and the international experience
If you are selected, and successfully complete a risk assessment, you will receive one lump sum to be used towards your travel and subsistence expenses.
Rates:
| Widening Participation Students | Non-Widening Participation Students |
| Flat rate of £950 | Flat rate of £500 |
University's Widening Participation
The applications team will work directly with the Widening Participation and Scholarships teams to determine who is eligible for Widening Participation (WP) additional funding.
All students deemed eligible for the WP rate will be emailed directly by the Widening Participation team by mid-January 2024 encouraging them to apply for the Go Abroad Fund and telling them that if successful, they are eligible for the Widening Participation rate.
If your application is successful but you have not received an email from the Widening Participation team, you will receive the “Non-Widening Participation” rate in the table above.
Please note that the University's Widening Participation criteria only applies to undergraduate students.
Widening Participation status is generally only applied to students meeting the WP eligibility criteria who had established UK residency at the point at which they commenced their Undergraduate studies. Successful Postgraduate, PhD, and international student applicants will receive the non-WP rate.
Edinburgh's Development Trust
We gratefully acknowledge that part of the funding for the Go Abroad Fund, is provided by the University of Edinburgh Development Trust. Without this ongoing support, we would not be able to fund these projects, which do so much for the quality of the student learning experience at the University of Edinburgh.
We would like to thank all alumni, staff and other donors who support the Development Trust, including through its unrestricted Edinburgh Fund.
Find out more about the University of Edinburgh's Development Trust and the Edinburgh Fund.
If you want to know more about the Go Abroad Fund, please visit our frequently asked questions page: