Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Exeter

A delegation of Exeter medical students sat the 14th National Undergraduate Neuroanatomy Competition at the University of Glasgow in 2026, and three of them won prizes. A second-year took the runner-up pre-clinical trophy and two third-years earned distinction medals. It was the fourth year in a row that Exeter students placed, and from 2023 to 2026 they won 16 of the 56 national prizes on offer.

Posters and Researcher-Led Grants

The Doctoral College holds a poster competition as part of its month-long Festival of PGR Research. In 2026 postgraduate researchers entered A0 or A1 posters, and judges scored each one on research content and on design and visual impact, out of 80. The Best STEM and Best HASS categories paid £100, £75 and £50 in vouchers for first, second and third place. A Most Innovative Poster prize carried a £100 voucher. The posters then went on show at the Streatham and Penryn campuses.

Postgraduate researchers can also lead a bid for a Researcher-led Initiative Award. The 2027 round pays up to £2,500 per award for events and projects on leadership and employability, communication, wellbeing or building community. A PGR bid must name other PGRs as beneficiaries, and the money goes to activities that benefit people beyond the applicants; conference travel and individual professional development fall outside it. In 2026, 44 people applied and 13 initiatives were funded.

Scholarships

For students enrolling in 2027/28, the University offers 150 undergraduate and 150 taught master's Exeter Excellence Scholarships to international students who hold an offer. The undergraduate award is worth £15,000 each year and the master's award £15,000 for the first year, both paid as a reduction of international tuition fees.

Eligible Exeter graduates who go on to a standalone taught or research postgraduate programme beginning in 2026/27 or 2027/28 can receive a Progression Scholarship worth 20% of the first-year tuition fee. The University's PhD funding page also lists an Alumni Scholarship toward fees and Sanctuary Scholarships for people seeking asylum and refugees who cannot access student finance.

Writing Help

Students book twenty-minute appointments with the Study Skills advisers, who also run workshops, drop-in sessions and online study resources.

English Language Skills Development offers one-to-one support in two lengths. A 20-minute Academic Literacy and English appointment covers a specific point of English. A 50-minute assignment tutorial gives feedback on a piece of writing: grammar, vocabulary, flow and clarity of ideas, along with use of sources, organisation and criticality. Writing cafés give students a quiet place to write with an EAP expert in the room.

Theses and Proofreading

Chapter 11 of the Teaching Quality Assurance Manual sets the presentation rules for research theses. A PhD thesis should not normally exceed 100,000 words, an MPhil 60,000 and an MbyRes 40,000, counted without the abstract, preliminaries, referencing footnotes, appendices and bibliography. Text is size 12 in Arial, Aptos or Calibri with double or one-and-a-half spacing. The abstract runs to 300 words at most with up to 10 keywords, and the preliminary pages carry one of two set statements on generative AI.

Theses go to the PGR Administration Office as a single PDF. The office checks only that files open and are legible. After the award is approved, the final version must be deposited in Open Research Exeter (ORE) before the award can be processed.

On proofreading, the University's marking rules for taught programmes state that responsibility for proofreading a student's work lies with the student, and staff point students to support and tools such as those Study Zone provides. INTO University of Exeter also keeps an academic copy editor register, a fee-based service established after the Board of the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies raised concern about completion delays in 2004. Its copy editors correct low-level errors of grammar and punctuation, with only minimal negotiation of meaning, and may send a text back to the supervisor if it isn't ready. Students arrange the work and the fee with the editor privately.

Exeter's marking rules place the responsibility for proofreading with the student, and our editors work at that level: a final check of grammar, punctuation and consistency, with every decision left to the writer. See our University of Exeter dissertation and thesis editing and University of Exeter essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• Academic Tone: Mastering the Authoritative Voice in Research
• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits