Key Facts about the Rhodes Scholarship

Key Facts about the Rhodes Scholarships

• The Rhodes Scholarships are postgraduate awards to support study at the University of Oxford. Established in 1903, they are the oldest international graduate scholarship programme in the world. 
• We now award over 100 Scholarships a year. The Scholarship covers all fees and a stipend for two to three years, with over 300 Scholars in Residence in Oxford at one time. 
• Students from anywhere in the world can apply.
• Rhodes Scholars may study almost any full-time course at Oxford and are distributed across a high proportion of the university’s 39 colleges each year.
• Nearly 8,000 Rhodes Scholars have gone on to serve at the forefront of government, education, the arts, NGOs, commerce, research, journalism, and other sectors. They include well known advocates for social justice and individuals who have advanced the frontiers of science and medicine.
• Our alumni include Nobel, PEN/Faulkner, and Pulitzer Prize winners, heads of state, university presidents and vice chancellors, high court judges, leaders of major organisations such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, and much more. 
• As of 2020, nineteen Scholarships are awarded annually to students from Africa through six constituencies: East Africa, Kenya, Southern Africa (including South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and eSwatini), West Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 
• African students outside of these constituencies are eligible through the Global Scholarship, established in 2018. 
• Our goal is to expand the number of fully endowed Scholarships across the African continent to 32, with an initial focus on raising endowment to support more Scholarships in West and East Africa, funded in perpetuity. In recent months we have raised over £5M to fully endow a second West African Rhodes Scholarship and secure initial funding toward a third, as well as initial funding towards full endowment of one East African Scholarship. We are also working to raise the funds to launch more Scholarships across the Global South, including Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.