Requesting deferral

You can request a deferral of your postgraduate offer to the next academic year, providing that:

• the course accepts deferred entry
• you have accepted your offer
• you have met any academic and reference conditions on the offer within the deadline to do so

• you have paid any tuition fee deposits if it's required – most postgraduate taught courses require international students to pay a deposit for visa purposes

Postgraduate Taught (PGT) and Postgraduate Research (PGR) change of start dates can be requested through our enquiry form. Please include your full name and University of Nottingham ID number. The deadline to request this is one day after the latest date to register.

For PhD and doctoral courses, you can enquire whether a later start date is available within the same academic year rather than deferring for a full year.

Deferral requests will be considered by the university and are not guaranteed. We may need to refer to the individual school or the academic supervisor (for postgraduate research courses) before confirming. Offers are usually confirmed once all necessary deposits have been paid and offer details for the following year are available.

Ordinarily, you can only defer the same offer once. If you still cannot attend in the following year and want to study the course another year later, you would need to make a new application. This is to ensure that all information in your application, including supporting evidence such as references, remains up to date and appropriate.

If you are considering or have requested a deferral, you should not complete registration processes for your course in the current year as deferrals cannot be processed once you have registered as a student.

Scholarships and funding

University of Nottingham scholarships

The university does not usually defer scholarship offers to the following year. If we've offered you a scholarship, this will be withdrawn and you would need to reapply for scholarships in the following year.

Scholarship details and availability may change from one year to the next. We also cannot guarantee that your scholarship application will be successful a second time as you will be given equal consideration with all other scholarship candidates at the time of reapplying.

Sponsored students

International students who will be sponsored by an external organisation will usually have their student visa CAS deposit waived after providing evidence of sponsorship for the relevant course and academic year.

If you need to defer your studies, you must provide a new letter or written confirmation from your sponsor, confirming that your sponsorship will be still be valid in the next academic year. If you cannot provide this confirmation, you must pay the deposit to defer your offer.

We are unable to support deposit waivers for Chevening or Commonwealth Scholarship applicants deferring an offer. If you intend to fund your deferred study via an application to one of these bodies and have not had confirmation of an award, you must pay the appropriate deposit in order to defer your offer.

 If you have any questions regarding deferral and evidence of sponsorship please contact us for advice.