Funding is decided before you're admitted

A common and expensive assumption: get admitted first, then work out the money.

For most funded positions, that sequence doesn’t exist. Funding decisions are frequently made alongside admission, from the same application, by the same people — and once the cycle’s allocations are made, they’re made.

How funding usually works, by type:

Funded PhD. In many systems the offer is the funding — a stipend plus fees, attached to a supervisor’s grant or a departmental allocation. There’s often nothing to apply for separately. You’re competing for a funded place, not applying for money after the fact.

Assistantships (teaching or research). Sometimes automatic with admission, sometimes a separate form due at the same time, sometimes decided by individual departments on their own schedule. This varies enormously and is worth checking per programme rather than assuming.

Departmental scholarships. Usually considered automatically from your application, occasionally requiring a short additional statement. The additional statement is often skipped by applicants and is frequently low-competition.

External scholarships. Separate applications, separate bodies, and often deadlines earlier than the university’s — sometimes by months. These are the ones most often missed entirely.

Master’s funding is generally scarcer than PhD funding, and partial rather than full. A “scholarship” covering 20% of fees is common and worth having, but it isn’t funding in the sense people mean.

What to do now:

For every programme on your list, find and write down: is funding automatic or separate, what’s the deadline, and is there an additional document. That’s a short exercise per programme and it routinely surfaces a deadline weeks earlier than expected.

And ask directly. “Are funded positions available for this intake, and is a separate application required?” is a normal, professional question. Admissions offices answer it. Not asking is a much bigger risk than asking.