The Trinity Maintenance Grant
Trinity College is delighted to announce that anyone joining the College as an undergraduate, in 2022, 2023 and 2024, who is eligible for the Cambridge Bursary Scheme will also receive the Trinity Maintenance Grant. In 2022-23, the value of this Grant will be £4,050 and you will receive this payment in each year of your undergraduate studies at Trinity (normally for up to four years from commencing your studies), provided you remain eligible for the Cambridge Bursary Scheme.
Our ambition is for all Trinity students to be able to complete and enjoy their degrees without financial concerns, giving you the security to be able to enjoy the rich cultural, social and sporting life Cambridge has to offer. We recognise that many students are from backgrounds which are under pressure financially, particularly in the wake of the COVID pandemic and increases in the cost of living, and we hope the Trinity Maintenance Grant can alleviate some of that pressure.
Trinity values applications from well-qualified, intellectually ambitious students of all backgrounds. The Trinity Maintenance Grant demonstrates the College’s strong desire to encourage applications from students from less advantaged backgrounds and to help ensure all our students can thrive intellectually and socially while they are here, regardless of financial status. In essence, we want to ensure that no one is discouraged from applying to Trinity College for financial reasons.
The full Trinity Maintenance Grant will also be available, in the same timeframe, to undergraduates who originally applied to Trinity College and were later accepted by another Cambridge College from the ‘Winter Pool’ or the ‘August Reconsideration Pool’ (previously known as ‘Adjustment’).
Below are answers to some questions you may have; but if you have further queries, please feel free to contact [email protected]. You may also be interested in this article in which two of our current students discuss the Trinity Maintenance Grant.
The Trinity Maintenance Grant will be paid in addition to CBS. If eligible, you will receive both payments and the Grant will not diminish the amount you are entitled to receive from CBS.
The Trinity Maintenance Grant is paid at a flat rate of £4,050 per year; everyone who is eligible will receive the full amount. The level of the CBS payment is based on household income (see the CBS website for indicative figures), with a maximum annual award of £3,500 per student. In addition, if you were eligible for free school meals from your local authority you are entitled to a further Educational Premium of £1,000 per year.
In total, therefore, for students from the lowest income backgrounds, the combination of CBS, Educational Premium and the Trinity Maintenance Grant means, from October 2022, a financial support package of up to £8,550 per year is available, covering the cost of accommodation, meals and most other regular maintenance expenses incurred as a Cambridge student.
If you receive a bursary through the CBS scheme (see the CBS website for details of eligibility), you will receive the full Trinity Maintenance Grant. Broadly speaking, you need to have both Home Fees status and an annual household income below £62,215 to be eligible for CBS.
No. This is a grant from Trinity College. You do not need to repay it. We do expect, however, that you will go on to have a successful and interesting career, and we very much hope that you will be able to find ways to utilise your future success to support the next generation of students at Trinity.
This is our estimate of the average price to rent a single-person room at Trinity College in the academic year 2022-23.
Yes. If you are continuing as a Trinity undergraduate from October 2022 and will be receiving CBS and/or the Top-Up Bursary, you will also receive the Trinity Maintenance Grant from October 2022 and for the remainder of your undergraduate career, normally for up to 4 years from commencing your studies.
If you are studying at Trinity, once you have been assessed as eligible for CBS, you will receive one-third of the annual amount (£1,350) credited to your College bill at the start of each term – no separate application is necessary.
However, if you originally applied to Trinity and have been allocated to another College through the ‘Winter Pool’ or ‘August Reconsideration Pool’, you will need to apply for the Trinity Maintenance Grant. A short application form will be made available here at the start of the 2022-23 academic year.
If you apply to the University of Cambridge, you may be made an offer for admission by a College other than your preferred choice, if that institution is oversubscribed. The ‘Winter Pool’ is our way of dealing with the fluctuating numbers of applications that are made to any one College, to ensure applicants are not disadvantaged by those fluctuations. In some cases, you may also be made an offer from the ‘August Reconsideration Pool’.
We believe that a student taken from one of these ‘Pools’ by another College should not be disadvantaged compared with one who is accepted for entry at their preferred College. Therefore, we are extending the Trinity Maintenance Grant to any Cambridge undergraduate student who applied to Trinity and whose application was ultimately accepted by another College via the ‘Winter Pool’ or ‘August Reconsideration Pool’. This applies to students starting their degrees in the academic years 2022, 2023 and 2024.
If you are eligible for the Trinity Maintenance Grant but are studying at another College, we will deduct from the Grant any amount additional to CBS which you receive through other scholarships or bursaries.
Please note that if you are offered a place at another Cambridge College, you will need to complete a short application form as we do not automatically receive information as to which students from the Pool have started degrees at other Colleges or are eligible for CBS. We will then transfer the Trinity Maintenance Grant to you on a termly basis.
This is a pilot scheme. We intend to monitor its effectiveness in supporting students and encouraging applicants over the next three years, after which we will make an evaluation and decide if the scheme should continue in 2025, or else be modified or terminated. However, if you begin your studies in 2022, 2023 or 2024, you will remain eligible to receive the Trinity Maintenance Grant, usually for up to four years, for the duration of your undergraduate career, provided you still meet the criteria for CBS.
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