Grants and Writing Resources for University College London

Three doctoral researchers on UCL Research Excellence Scholarships took the Scholar prizes in the 2026 Doctoral School Competition, announced on 10 June 2026 at the showcase in Senate House. The winner, a researcher at the Eastman Dental Institute, made a video that follows his lab work and his life in London outside it. Both runners-up entered photographs. One comes out of research on landscape, militarisation and immigration control in South-East England; the other shows cognitive neuroscience fieldwork in rural Rajasthan.

Scholarships for Doctoral and Master's Study

For 2026/27 UCL is offering 40 fully funded Research Excellence Scholarships to students from any country starting an MPhil/PhD or EngD on or after 1 October 2026. Each pays full tuition fees at the Home or Overseas rate, research costs of up to £1,200 a year and a maintenance stipend that rises with inflation; the full-time stipend for 2025/26 was £22,780. Funding normally runs three years full-time or five part-time, and a central panel chooses the scholars.

Master's applicants from lower-income backgrounds outside the UK can apply for the UCL Global Master's Scholarship. For full-time study in 2026/27 there are up to 85 awards of £15,000, chosen on financial need, with five reserved for students from India and one for a student from Japan. The money goes to tuition first, and any balance is paid toward living costs.

Competitions and Summer Research

The Doctoral School Competitions are open to every UCL postgraduate researcher, with five categories: research images as art, research posters, blogs, podcasts and vlogs. Winners and runners-up receive a cash prize and a certificate. The Student Funding Office adds prizes for current holders of UCL's research scholarships, and the UCL final of Three Minute Thesis, run by the Students' Union, takes place alongside the Competitions Showcase.

Undergraduates get lab time through the Faculty of Life Sciences Undergraduate Summer Research Studentships. Students in the penultimate year of a Life, Physical or Mathematical Sciences degree spend four to twelve weeks on a laboratory or computational project and are paid the London Living Wage for a 37.5-hour week.

Student Journals

UCL Press operates a student journal service free to UCL students, and its open access journals charge no publication fees. Postgraduate editors usually run each title for about an academic year, with a UCL department behind them for subject expertise and peer review. Bioscience Horizons is the exception: undergraduates produce it, and it publishes undergraduate and master's research in the biosciences.

The journal list includes the UCL Journal of Economics, the UCL Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Moveable Type from the English Department, Object from History of Art, and Slovo, which covers Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Writing Support

The Academic Communication Centre (ACC) works with students in every faculty through one-to-one tutorials, workshops, courses and webinars. Its programme includes grammar for academic writing, GenAI and writing workshops, writing retreats, and courses for postgraduates writing a dissertation or research project.

Students at the Institute of Education have the IOE Academic Writing Centre. Its 45-minute tutorials run on Microsoft Teams, and the Centre also holds writing days. Its workshops and writing retreats include evening and Saturday sessions, and its pages carry the annual Academic Writing Seminar Series of webinars.

Language and Writing Review, and the Thesis

UCL's Academic Manual defines Language and Writing Review as a third party or software checking structure, fluency, presentation, grammar, spelling, punctuation and translation. It may be considered academic misconduct if the reviewer or software makes substantive changes to content, or if such changes are made at their recommendation. The misconduct procedure covers postgraduate research students as well as taught students.

The ACC's Language and Writing Review guidance sorts the work into three groups. Fixing typos, spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, numbering, layout and formatting is generally acceptable. Changes to grammar, syntax, clarity, tone and word choice call for caution and are generally acceptable as long as they do not alter the meaning. Supplying content or argument, checking facts or data, cutting or adding material to meet a word count, significant changes to structure and adding references are generally unacceptable. The same limits apply to a professional proofreader, and faculty or programme rules take priority. The guidance advises keeping saved versions so the original can be shown if needed.

Research students follow the Doctoral School's thesis preparation rules. After the title page comes a signed declaration on authorship, contributions by others, use of AI and inclusion of published work, then an abstract of up to 300 words and an impact statement of up to 500. Submission is electronic, through UCL OneDrive. After the viva, the final copy goes to the Library for open access in UCL Discovery, and deposit is required before the degree is awarded.

Our final edit stays inside UCL's Language and Writing Review limits: spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and formatting, with your content, argument, data and references left as you wrote them. See our University College London dissertation and thesis editing and University College London essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority