When we are allocating Cumbria Bursaries or Progression Awards there are two steps to the process, and to be successfully awarded a student must pass both stages.
Part one is eligibility. Each of the bursaries have slightly different eligibility criteria and a student must meet all of the required criteria to progress to the next stage. For example the “household income of less than £25,000” is a key eligibility, however this is proven through the student finance household income assessment made by each students’ funding provider which must be completed by early October. This means if for whatever reason your application hasn’t been completed by Student Finance England before this date we won’t have proof of your household income in time to consider you are eligible.
Part two is priority. Once we have a master list of all students who are eligible we then rank that list according to the prioritisation criteria specific to each bursary package. Each priority element (such as ‘declared disability’ or ‘care leaver’ ‘household income’) is given a score and then based on how many points each student has we award the bursaries.
We usually have nearly twice as many students who are eligible than we do bursaries. As such we are unfortunately unable to award roughly half of the students who have a household income of less than £25,000 and who also met all the other eligibility criteria.
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