How the Allocation Process Works for Postgraduates

Postgraduate college membership is allocated using a structured, automated process. The process is designed to ensure that all students are treated fairly and consistently, using published criteria and without individual discretion.

All full-time postgraduate students who have accepted their academic offer are included in the allocation process once they have either submitted the Membership and Accommodation Application or the deadline provided to them for submission has passed.

How Your Preferences Are Used

When completing the Membership and Accommodation Application, you may:

rank up tofive colleges in order of preference for membership;
indicate whether you wish to be considered forUniversity accommodation; and
provide general room-type preferences where applicable.

Submitting preferences does not guarantee allocation to a particular college, but preferences are always considered first within the allocation process.

Allocation Groups

For the purposes of allocation, applicants are placed into one of the following groups:

students requesting accommodation who meet the accommodation guarantee;
students requesting accommodation who do not meet the accommodation guarantee; and
students requestingcollege membership only.

Each group is allocated separately. College capacities are proportionately distributed across these groups to ensure a fair and balanced allocation.

Allocation Rounds

Allocations are made in a series of rounds:

First round	The system considers each applicant’s first-choice college.
Second round	If capacity has been reached at the first-choice college for the relevant criteria, the system considers the second choice.
Third, Fourth, and Fifth rounds	Where applicable, the system considers the third, fourth, and then fifth choice in turn.
Final round	If none of the stated preferences can be met, or where no preferences were submitted, applicants are allocated to a college with available capacity.

This approach ensures that preferences are considered wherever possible, while also ensuring that every eligible student receives a college membership allocation.

Study Level and Fee Status

Each college has defined capacity limits for different groups of students, including:

Postgraduate Taught (PGT) and Postgraduate Research (PGR) students; and
Home and Overseas fee status students.

These limits are used to support balanced and diverse college communities. All allocations are made in line with these capacity constraints.

Randomisation and Fairness

To ensure fairness where demand exceeds available capacity, applicants within each allocation stage are processed in a random order.

A fixed random value (often referred to as a random seed) is used. This ensures that the process is:

fair and unbiased; and
reproducible, meaning that if the allocation needs to be re-run, it will produce the same results.

Randomisation is used only where necessary and does not override stated preferences or eligibility criteria.

Confirmation of Allocation

Once the allocation process is complete, students are notified of their college membership allocation by email.

Students who have requested accommodation will then receive further information about accommodation offers and acceptance deadlines in line with the published accommodation process.