Road and red-brick university buildings on the University of Manchester campus.

United Kingdom Rounds are announced through the British Council and the participating universities, with applications for recent cycles running to late April for September entry. Course lists and partner universities change every year

British Council Scholarships for Women in STEM

This is, in cash terms, one of the largest scholarships a Sri Lankan woman can win for a UK Master's, and it is far less well known here than Chevening. The British Council funds each award at a minimum of £40,000 — around LKR 16 million — and unusually the package is designed so you do not have to find money anywhere else: full tuition, a living stipend, return airfare, visa costs, the Immigration Health Surcharge, and English language support if you need it. Support for childcare is available for applicants with children, which almost no other UK scholarship offers. Sri Lanka is explicitly named among the eligible countries alongside India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, with a cohort of around twenty-five South Asian scholarships in recent rounds across a set of partner UK universities that has included Imperial College London, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and Queen Mary University of London, among more than a dozen others. The subject scope is STEM in the broad sense: engineering, computing and data science, mathematics, physical and life sciences, medicine and public health, environmental and climate science, and agriculture. Two eligibility rules quietly disqualify a large share of Sri Lankan applicants, so read them before you invest time. First, you must not have previously studied at degree level or higher in the UK, and you must not have lived in the UK recently. Second, you must agree to return to Sri Lanka for at least two years after the scholarship ends. That return commitment is not decorative — the whole programme exists to increase the number of women in STEM careers in South Asia, not to move them to Britain.

British Council

External Organization-funded

emoji_events Award Overview

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Minimum Value

£40,000 (LKR ~16M) per scholarship

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Covers

Tuition, stipend, flights, visa, health surcharge, English support

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Unusual Extra

Childcare support available for applicants with children

fact_check Eligibility Criteria

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Women Applicants From Sri Lanka

You must be a woman and hold a passport of, and be permanently resident in, one of the eligible countries — Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bangladesh or Pakistan. Sri Lankan applicants have been explicitly eligible in recent cycles.

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A Completed Undergraduate Degree

All components of your bachelor's degree must be complete at the time you apply, and you must meet the entry requirements of the specific UK Master's you are applying for, including its English language condition.

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No Previous UK Degree Study

You must not have already studied at degree level or above in the United Kingdom, and you must not have lived in the UK recently. This rules out applicants who did a UK transnational programme delivered in the UK or an exchange year there.

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Demonstrated Financial Need

The application must show that you need financial support to study in the UK. This is a funded-access programme, not a pure merit prize, so an honest account of your household finances in rupees is appropriate.

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Two-Year Return Commitment

Successful applicants agree to return to their country of citizenship for a minimum of two years after the scholarship ends. If your plan is to use a UK Master's as a route to the Graduate Route visa and long-term settlement, this is the wrong scholarship and you should say so to yourself before applying.

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STEM Subjects at Partner Universities

Only Master's courses on the published list at participating UK universities qualify. The list is reissued each cycle and has covered engineering, computing, data science, environmental and climate science, agriculture, public health and tropical medicine.

account_tree Application Process

Find the current list of universities and courses

Start from the British Council's Women in STEM page for the cycle, then follow through to the participating university's own scholarship page. Each university runs its own application and sets its own deadline — there is no single central form.

Apply for admission to the Master's course

Most partner universities require you to have applied for, or hold an offer for, the course before or alongside the scholarship application. Apply for admission early rather than waiting for scholarship news.

Write the application around impact in Sri Lanka

The strongest applications name a concrete Sri Lankan problem — grid stability and renewables, water quality, dengue surveillance, agricultural yields under climate stress, software engineering capacity — and explain what the UK course adds and what you will do here on return.

Prepare the financial-need and career sections carefully

Give real figures. State household income in rupees, your existing obligations, and why self-funding a UK Master's at LKR 12–16 million in fees plus living costs is not possible for you.

References and English evidence

Academic and professional references are required, and the university's own English requirement still applies. Sri Lankan applicants with an English-medium bachelor's can sometimes use it in place of IELTS — confirm this with the university, not with the British Council.

UK Student visa

Awardees apply for a UK Student visa with the scholarship letter as evidence of funds and the Immigration Health Surcharge covered by the award. Biometrics for Sri Lankan applicants are given in Colombo.

Why This Scholarship?

The British Council designed this programme around a specific gap: women are a minority in STEM postgraduate study across South Asia, and the barriers are financial and practical rather than academic. That is why the package includes things other scholarships leave out — the health surcharge, visa fees, English language support and childcare — items that in practice decide whether a woman with a family can accept a UK offer at all. For Sri Lanka, where women outperform men in A/L science streams but are heavily under-represented in senior engineering and technology roles, it is one of the best-matched international awards available.