If you apply before the relevant funding deadline and then receive a conditional offer from us, you will be ranked alongside other eligible applicants for the University funding competitions.
There are a small number of scholarships available, for both UK and overseas applicants. To be considered for these, you must also complete the relevant parts of the application form. We advise that you do this in consultation with your prospective supervisor as it's important for your statements to show how your application meets each funder’s criteria.
Funding sources include:
- The Gates Cambridge Trust, who assess not only outstanding intellectual ability, but also a commitment to improving the lives of others, and leadership potential. Your Gates statement on your application form must show evidence for these criteria. US Gates Deadline: 15 October 2025.
- The Cambridge Trust administers a range of funds for UK and international students. University Funding Competition Department Deadline: 07 January 2026. This includes the Cambridge Trust, Gates Cambridge, and many other funding opportunities. (For more information please see the University's Postgraduate Funding Search page.)
- The Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programme aims to support academically outstanding University of Cambridge PhD students from any part of the world, and in any discipline, to contribute to society by producing intellectually rigorous research which makes a positive difference to the academic community and beyond. (Jessica, pictured above right, is a current Harding Scholar here.) Application deadline dependent on course: either early December 2025 or early January 2026.
Departmental funding
- The Premium Research Studentship is designed to enable exceptional scholars in all areas of Computer Science to undertake up to three years of full-time research here leading to a PhD. Successful applicants will have demonstrated that they have considered the role of computing in the future of the planet.
- CASCADE, our new Computer Architecture and Semiconductor Design Centre, focuses on research that addresses some of the grand challenges in computer architecture, design automation and semiconductors, a critical area of computing that underpins today’s technologies and drives the next generation of computing systems. The Centre funds PhD students in the area, through support from industry, including Arm and AMD.
- The Hopper Studentship. Funding for one PhD student per year, generously gifted to us by our former Head of Department Professor Sir Andy Hopper. The studentship can be in any field from theory to AI.
Applicants are also encouraged to access external sources of scholarship funding from their home countries. There are also some specialised University funds which need a special application.
We cannot cover all possible funding sources here, but the University of Cambridge Graduate Prospectus web pages cover the subjects of funding and costs in detail. We also encourage students to explore the Postgraduate Student Funding Search.
