Elective Bursaries: 6 UK Awards, Deadlines and How to Apply

Elective Bursaries: 6 UK Awards, Deadlines and How to Apply

Elective bursaries are small, non-repayable grants that royal colleges, specialty societies and charities give medical students to help pay for their elective. In the UK most of them are worth £500 to £1,000, and each one has its own rules on membership, specialty and timing. This guide compares six elective bursaries, lists their next deadlines and shows you how to write an application that wins.

Researched and editorially reviewed by Celina Köhsl, medical student and member of the travel4med team. The sections on elective projects and learning objectives were reviewed by MUDr. Amandeep Grewal, a doctor on the travel4med team.

What are elective bursaries?

Elective bursaries are grants for one specific purpose: your medical elective, the self-chosen clinical placement most medical schools build into the final years. A funder gives you a fixed sum, usually toward travel, accommodation, visas or vaccinations, and in return expects you to learn something in its field and tell it what you learned.

They are different from the big public schemes. The Turing Scheme or Erasmus+ pay through your university, and our guide on how to fund a clinical placement abroad explains those routes. Elective bursaries come from professional bodies instead, so the money is smaller but the competition is often limited to members and to one specialty.

That is the trick. A £500 award from a specialty society may get only a handful of applicants who fit its field, while a general university fund is open to your whole year group.

Which elective bursaries can UK medical students apply for?

UK medical students can apply to dozens of elective bursaries; the six below are well known and were all open, closed or announced on their official pages on 17 October 2026. Check each page again before applying, because rounds open and close every year.

A few details matter more than they look. The Association of Anaesthetists only funds students who will be away from their base institution and gives priority to elective placements supporting work in developing countries. It also tells overseas students to check that they are permitted to apply for charitable funding. The BSG lists the costs a bursary could cover: extra accommodation and travel, institutional elective administration fees, and visa and immunisation costs for electives abroad.

How much money do elective bursaries pay?

Elective bursaries in this comparison pay between £500 and £1,000 each. Three of the six top out at £500, the Association of Anaesthetists pays up to £750, and IME and RCPSG pay up to £1,000. Stack two or three and you can cover a real share of flights, housing and vaccines.

Students in England have one more source. The government travel grant covers medical and dental students studying abroad, and it does not need to be repaid. You pay the first £303 of your travel costs yourself, and for undergraduate courses that started before 1 January 2027 the grant drops by £1 for every £8.73 of household income over £39,796 (GOV.UK). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own student finance rules, so check with your own national body.

When are the deadlines for elective bursaries in 2026 and 2027?

The next deadlines for elective bursaries fall between November 2026 and January 2027, which is why now is the right time to plan. Most funders want your application months before you travel, and several refuse anything submitted after the elective has started.

Here is the calendar from the official pages, in date order:

• 11 November 2026: IME. Closes at 23:59. You will hear the outcome by 11 December 2026 (IME guidelines 2026/2027).
• 24 November 2026: RCPSG. Closes every year on 24 November, with interviews possible in December and review in January. For a 2027 elective, this is your round (RCPSG).
• Late autumn 2026: RCP. The page says the award is closed and expected to reopen in late autumn 2026; no date is given yet (RCP).
• 13 January 2027: Association of Anaesthetists. Only for electives starting between 1 May and 31 October 2027 (Association of Anaesthetists).
• Open now: BSG. Applications opened at the end of September 2026 (BSG).
• Next BOA round: not yet announced. The 2026 round closed on 17 April 2026 and covered electives from March 2026 to February 2027 (BOA).

Line these dates up with your school's own elective calendar. Our medical elective application timeline shows when to book, and our guide to getting a medical elective approved covers the paperwork your elective office wants first.

How do you write a winning bursary application?

A winning bursary application answers the funder's own criteria, one by one, in the funder's own words. Read the assessment criteria before you write a single sentence, then make sure every criterion has a clear paragraph. Panels score what is on the page, often blind.

What the six funders actually ask for:

• A clear link to their field. The BSG judges "relevance to Gastroenterology or Hepatology" first; the anaesthetists prefer electives relevant to anaesthesia, intensive care, perioperative medicine or pain relief. A general elective with no specialty angle will struggle here.
• Learning objectives. The BSG lists "defined learning objectives delivering benefits to the student" as a criterion. Our guide to elective learning objectives shows how to write them.
• Short, focused writing. The Association of Anaesthetists asks for a description of up to 500 words, plus 200 words on why you chose the specialty and 200 on why you chose the country.
• A real project for IME. The project can be empirical research, a literature review or a focused reflection, and it needs academic references. Your medical school ethics lead must sign and submit the form.
• Proof of the placement. The BOA wanted a confirmation letter from the elective supervisor and a supporting letter from the medical school.
• Financial need. The RCP assesses academic excellence and financial need, so a clear budget helps. Our budget for a clinical placement abroad breaks the costs down.

Then there is the follow-up. RCPSG wants a report within two months of finishing, and IME wants a report of no more than 1,000 words within three months. Our guide to writing a medical elective report helps with that, and a case report from your elective can double as poster material for IME's student conference.

Your 7-step plan for elective bursaries

Follow these steps in order and you will apply to the right elective bursaries on time:

1. Choose your elective specialty and destination first. Bursaries follow your topic. Our list of medical elective ideas helps if you are undecided.
2. Shortlist two to four bursaries that match. Use the table above and your medical school's own elective funding page.
3. Join the societies you need. RCP, BOA, BSG and RCPSG all ask for membership before you apply.
4. Get your placement confirmed in writing. Ask the host for dates, hospital, department and duties, and check whether the funder needs a letter signed by your supervisor.
5. Write learning objectives and a budget. Keep both specific to the funder's field and to the real costs.
6. Ask your school for support early. IME needs your ethics lead to submit the form, and BOA wanted a supporting letter from the medical school.
7. Submit before the deadline and diary the report. Put the report due date in your calendar the day you are awarded the money.

What if you don't study in the UK?

If you study outside the UK, these elective bursaries are mostly closed to you, because they ask for UK study or for study in Great Britain and Ireland. The same model exists almost everywhere, though: professional bodies and universities fund electives in their own field.

Start with three places. First, your faculty's elective or international office, which usually keeps a list of internal travel grants. Second, the student section of your national medical association and of the specialty society you are most interested in. Third, your university's global health programme, if it has one. Our guide on how to fund a medical internship abroad names real schemes in Australia, the US and Europe.

Studying in Germany? Our sister site explains scholarships for medical students at dein-medizinstudium.de: Medizin studieren mit Stipendium (in German), and travel4med.de covers funding an internship abroad from Germany (in German).

Can you use a bursary for an organised placement?

None of the six award pages we read excludes an organised placement, but none of them promises to pay a placement fee either. The BSG names institutional elective administration fees as a possible cost, and the anaesthetists fund travel and accommodation. Ask the funder before you budget.

If you book with us, you get a confirmation with dates, hospital, department and duties, which is the kind of detail funders ask about. Compare our destinations in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bali and Zanzibar, and keep your costs down with our list of cheap medical electives. A good reference letter for a medical elective abroad also helps when a panel asks why you.

Got your bursary in sight? We organise medical electives, nursing placements, final-year placements, physician assistant placements and observerships in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bali and Zanzibar. Explore our medical elective placements and nursing placements, or book a free consultation and we'll help you pick dates that fit your bursary deadlines. travel4med is part of the futuredoctor group ecosystem, which supports students from application to graduation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Royal College of Physicians: RCP medical student elective bursaries. rcp.ac.uk, read 17 October 2026.
• British Orthopaedic Association: Medical Student Elective Bursaries. boa.ac.uk, read 17 October 2026.
• British Society of Gastroenterology: Undergraduate elective bursary. bsg.org.uk, read 17 October 2026.
• Association of Anaesthetists: Undergraduate Elective Funding. anaesthetists.org, read 17 October 2026.
• Institute of Medical Ethics: Elective Bursaries page and 2026/2027 Guidelines for applicants (dated 27 August 2026). ime-uk.org, read 17 October 2026.
• Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Medical Elective Scholarship. rcpsg.ac.uk, read 17 October 2026.
• GOV.UK: Travel grants for students (England). gov.uk, read 17 October 2026.