The Robertson Trust Scholarship and Journey to Success Programme

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The Robertson Trust Scholarship

Each year, over 700 young people, known as Robertson Trust Scholars, from broad range of subjects across Scotland’s universities are are provided support through a financial bursary and the Journey to Success programme. Since 1992, the Scholarship has supported over 2,000 young people to overcome financial and social barriers to gain the university education and career they aspire to.

The programme has been designed to support young people who have the drive and potential to access university, but not necessarily the money to do so, and we rely on the schools, colleges and universities we work with to help identify the most eligible candidates based on our guidelines below.

Introduced in 2015, the Journey to Success Programme was created to offer self-development opportunities and financial bursary support, up to £4,250 per academic year, to 16-25 year olds in Scotland who face barriers to higher education. The programme offers a range of training sessions and events throughout each academic year designed to support Scholars to work towards a career they aspire to.

How to apply

In order to apply for the Scholarship Programme you need to be nominated by a school, college, or university. We do not accept direct applications from students or families.

Please find our Application Process detailed below.

If you are a staff member from a school, college, or university and would like to find out about the application process, please refer to the updates on our landing page and email scholars@therobertsontrust.org.uk

What does The Scholarship involve?

The Journey to Success programme offers Scholars a range of self-development opportunities designed to help them fulfil their potential and develop the skills needed to reach their career aspirations. Opportunities include:

The Welcome Weekend: designed to begin building the peer support networks scholars can benefit from to ease their transition into university and maximise the potential of their degree. Watch our 2022 Scholar Welcome Event video to learn how Scholars benefitted from the event.
Leadership development: encourage second-year Scholars to support their peers throughout the Welcome Event and first year at university.  
Personal development training sessions: improve the self-awareness needed for university and graduate recruitment success. 
Career Pathways: We work with many partner organisations across a range of industries to offer Scholars meaningful work experience opportunities in the form of bespoke 'Career Pathways'. These pathways offer Scholars mentoring and networking opportunities and provide valuable career insights that help them prepare for working within their chosen sector.

As part of the programme, Scholars should complete the induction process (the Welcome Weekend), and share a short written report at the end of each semester refelcting on how they are progressing through university and to share how they are doing with our dedicated team. This helps us to provide effective support to any Scholar who needs it.

The Application Process

All applications for The Robertson Trust Scholarship and Journey to Success Programme are made through nominations from schools, colleges, or universities. Nominees are then invited to apply to the Scholarship.

With over 200 applications each year for only 100 places, our team works to ensure that our criteria not only take account of both financial need and whether each candidate has other experiences that would act as barriers to accessing university, such as being from an under-represented population group or having faced particular life events in their past.

Our overall aim is to prevent and reduce poverty and trauma in Scotland. We want to support young people who have past or current experience of poverty and trauma and have a significant risk of experiencing this in the future. The programme has been designed to support young people who have the drive and potential to access university, but not necessarily the money to do so, and we rely on the schools, colleges and universities we work with to help identify the most eligible candidates based on our guidelines below. 

SHEP Partnership

This year we are piloting a partnership approach with the Schools for Higher Education Programme (SHEP) to support our nomination process and help to support schools to identify young people who would benefit the most from the scholarship programme and would be most likely to be successful in applying. This is for school nominations only. Schools should reach out to their relevant SHEP Lead (Focus West, Aspire North, LEAPs, or Lift Off) for additional support.

Applicants must meet all Essential Criteria, outlined below, in order for us to consider their application. Our Priority Groups, also outlined below, highlight the groups we aim to support through the Scholarship programme. Once we receive a nomination, we send the nominee the application form and other resources to help them apply and ask our nominators to complete a reference , telling us a little about their candidate’s background and why they meet our essential criteria.

When considering each application, we acknowledge the difficulty some candidates may face in describing personal challenges, but these should be balanced with examples of resilience, positive outlook and connectivity with their local community as a celebration of their abilities.  

Please refer to the Application Infographic for more information on our process in 2025 - please note: our processes may change each year.

Essential Criteria

All applications must be nominated by one of our partner schools, colleges or universities according to the following guidelines:

Resident in Scotland at the time of application. As a Scotland-wide funder, we can only consider applicants who have attended school in Scotland and are resident in Scotland at the time of application
Have made an application to a university in Scotland. As a Scotland-wide funder, we provide support to students at universities in Scotland.  
16-25 year old accessing a programme of undergraduate study. Our programme focuses on young people accessing undergraduate study, but we also acknowledge the articulation route through college.
First degree. We cannot consider applicants who have already obtained a degree.
Eligibility for SAAS support. Our financial support is intended to complement other sources of statutory support and not replace it. Candidates must be eligible for bursary support (Young Student Bursary, Independent Student Bursary etc.) and tuition fees as a minimum requirement through the Student Awards Agency for Scotland.

Please note, that we are unable to consider any nomination that does not meet all the above essential criteria.

Our Priority Groups

We are particularly interested in supporting students who face financial barriers to accessing and participating at university and face other barriers to accessing university (for example belonging to an under-represented population group or having faced life events that could make going to university less likely).

Indicators of Financial Need:

The Robertson Trust Scholarship aims to support young people who experience significant financial barriers to accessing university. Experiencing financial barriers means not having enough money to cover essential living costs, such as rent, bills, food, and clothing.

In our application process we are looking for strong evidence of financial need from the young person applying. The following are examples of financial circumstances that might indicate financial need in young people accessing university:

Having parents or carers who are in a low-income job or who are unemployed
Having parents or carers who are eligible for income-assessed social security, such as Universal Credit
Being eligible for education-related financial assistance, such as Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), Free School Meals, School Clothing Grants
Being eligible for Universal Credit, Scottish Child Payment or Carer’s Allowance
Having parents or carers in receipt of income-assessed scholarships and bursaries including SAAS
Other examples of living in a low-income household

Other barriers:

The Robertson Trust Scholarship aims to support young people who have experienced other barriers to accessing university, in addition to financial barriers. This could include belonging to an underrepresented population group and/or having faced life events that make accessing university more difficult than it would otherwise be.

Being under-represented in higher education means certain groups of students have lower rates of participation because they experience systemic barriers not experienced by the majority of the student population. As such, these groups may be less likely to attend and stay at university without additional support.

Underrepresented groups that may face barriers:

Are from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic groups
Have a disability or long-term health condition
Are formally or informally care-experienced (this can mean having lived in residential care, having lived with a foster family, having experienced kinship care with a member of your family etc.)
Are Estranged from their family
Have or have had unpaid caring responsibilities for a friend, family member, or guardian
Are from the Gypsy, Roma, and/or Traveller Communities

Life events that may form barriers:

We will also aim to support individuals with current or past experiences that could act as barriers to entering university. This could include personal or family experiences of multiple disadvantages, such as homelessness, substance misuse, domestic violence, mental ill-health or other disruptive life events affecting their childhood or home life. This could also include those who have experienced deep poverty or very low income. We encourage our educational partners to nominate individuals who have faced such challenges for the Scholarship.

The Application Form:

While we recognise the complexity of the personal challenges and socio-economic issues many potential candidates may be experiencing, we will also ask them to provide the following information in the application form if comfortable doing so:

Financial need. We support young people who experience financial barriers to participation in higher education.
Under-represented characteristics. We are particularly interested in supporting students who come from backgrounds that are currently under-represented in higher education. These include those listed above.
Commitment to learning. We support young people who have a genuine passion and commitment to learning and for their proposed course of undergraduate study.
Resilience. We support scholars who have shown resilience in the way they have addressed barriers in their lives.

Application Confidentiality

Please note that only The Robertson Trust Scholarship Team members have access to any information applicants share in deciding about their application. The Scholarship Team includes our external alumni assessors, who may review an anonymised version of an application as part of our assessment process. As former recipients of The Robertson Trust Scholarship, our external assessors bring their lived experience to the assessment process and are provided with training to ensure a rigorous and equitable assessment process for all applicants. For further information about how we handle this information please read our Privacy Statement.