Tuition fee deposits for Masters applicants – 2024 entry

Tuition fee deposits are paid by taught postgraduate applicants who will need a Student visa in order to study in the UK and require a CAS from the University to make a visa application.

If you are fully funded by a University-recognised sponsor, you do not need to pay the deposit but will need to provide a valid financial guarantee or final award letter instead.

If your scholarship covers only part of your tuition fee, you will be required to pay the deposit.

If the amount you will be paying yourself is less than £3,000, you will need to pay your portion alongside providing your sponsor letter in order to receive a CAS.

If you will be studying a taught postgraduate course that is delivered through online/distance learning, and therefore do not require a CAS or visa to study in the UK, you do not need to pay the deposit. 

The tuition fee deposit is £3,000 but you can pay more if you wish. The deposit will be deducted from your course fee, so it is not an additional cost. If you choose to pay more, please still select ‘Tuition deposit’ as the payment type as this will help us to allocate your payment to your CAS.

After you have accepted an unconditional offer, the University will email you to confirm your acceptance and request your deposit payment or exemption evidence. Please do not pay the tuition fee deposit before you have received the email request. 

If you will be studying a taught postgraduate course only, you must pay the deposit or provide acceptable exemption evidence by four weeks before your course start date. Please do not pay when your offer is conditional.

If you will be studying a summer pre-sessional English course on campus at the University of Leeds Language Centre before your Masters programme, we may invite you to pay the tuition fee deposit before you have met the academic conditions of your Masters offer. This is to help you to receive a CAS in good time. However, we recommend that you only pay if you are certain to meet your offer conditions. Please refer to our deadlines for pre-sessional courses page for deposit payment and exemption evidence deadlines.

Meeting the deposit and funding evidence deadline does not guarantee that you will be able to arrive in time for the start of your course. For this reason, you are advised to pay the deposit or provide appropriate funding evidence as soon as possible after accepting your unconditional offer. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have enough time to apply for a visa, travel to the UK and commence your studies on time.

You should only pay the tuition fee deposit if you have the funds in place to pay your full tuition fee. The deposit is not refundable in the event of an unsuccessful funding application. If you are reliant on a full fee scholarship or sponsorship award, we advise that you do not pay the deposit while you await the outcome of your scholarship application, as you may not be eligible for a refund.

Once the University has contacted you to request your deposit, you will need to respond to a Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal to confirm you will be paying the deposit. You will then be able to see a new section in the portal called My CAS Payments, where you will need to read and accept the terms and conditions of the deposit process before you can proceed to the payment stage.

You can either pay by credit or debit card using our online payment system or make a payment in your local currency via Flywire (a payment service for overseas student fees). Flywire payment options vary between regions but may include bank transfers, card payments and electronic payments. 

We do not accept direct bank transfers.

When making your payment, please select ‘Tuition deposit’ as the payment type as this will help us to allocate your payment to your CAS.

It is possible to pay the deposit using more than one card, if needed.

Please allow three working days for your payment to be processed. We will then send you a confirmation email and the payment will be visible in the My CAS Payments section of your portal.

You do not need to notify us once you have paid. 

Once the University has contacted you to request your deposit, you will need to respond to a Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal to confirm that you are fully sponsored and provide a final award letter or financial guarantee as proof. Your evidence will then be reviewed and we will email you to confirm whether we have been able to exempt you from paying the deposit.

We are not able to exempt applicants on the basis of a scholarship application or conditional award letter. If you do not have a final award letter at the point of receiving the email, please wait until you are able to provide it before responding to the Deposit and Exemption message.

For deposit exemption purposes, your sponsor letter must:

• be from a University-recognised sponsor (this includes governments, corporations/employers, charities and universities, but does not include family members or friends)
• be clearly legible and written in English
• be on official letter-headed paper
• include the official financial sponsor's name and contact details
• include your name
• be dated within the current academic year or clearly state which academic year the sponsorship is for
• specify the amount of money that the official financial sponsor is paying or state that the sponsor will cover all course fees
• be final and unconditional.

Please note that you will also be required to provide your letter to the Fees team when you register as a student, so that your sponsor can be invoiced, and additional criteria may apply at that time. For more information, please see our fees guidance for sponsored students.

If you will be receiving the US Federal Loan, you are not required to pay the deposit. Once you accept your unconditional offer you will receive an email requesting that you complete the Deposit and Exemption message in your application portal to confirm your funding. You should select ‘US Federal Loan recipient’ from the options given.

There is no need to provide any evidence as the funding is arranged internally by the University, so you will automatically be exempted from paying the deposit once your loan is confirmed.

If you are taking a summer pre-sessional English language course on campus before your Masters course, you will need to pay the £3,000 tuition fee deposit or provide evidence of full funding before we can issue your CAS for the pre-sessional. 

You will not need to pay a second deposit towards your Masters course once you have completed the pre-sessional. You may receive an automated message asking you to pay again when your Masters offer becomes unconditional, but a confirmation of payment email will follow shortly.

Depending on the type of offer you receive, we may invite you to pay the deposit before you have met the academic conditions of your Masters offer. This is to help you to receive a CAS in good time. However, please only pay if you are sure that you will be able to meet your offer condition.

Please refer to our deadlines for pre-sessional courses page for the deadline to pay the deposit or provide appropriate funding evidence.

If you do not need a Student visa, you do not need to pay the deposit but you will need to provide evidence of your alternative immigration status.

If you will be studying the online summer pre-sessional, you do not need to pay the tuition fee deposit.

If you have an alternative immigration status that means you do not require a Student visa to study in the UK (such as indefinite leave to remain), you will need to confirm this in response to the Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal and upload your evidence. If it is approved, you will be exempted from paying the deposit and we will not send you a CAS.

Your offer will remain valid until the deadline to pay the deposit or provide exemption evidence has passed. As the deposit is a non-refundable payment (unless otherwise stated in these FAQs), paying the deposit (or providing appropriate sponsorship evidence) shows your commitment to the University of Leeds and enables your application to proceed to the stage where you can receive a CAS and register for your course.

Your right to a deposit refund is limited to the following circumstances:

• If you request a refund within 14 days of the payment being received by the University of Leeds.
• If your visa application is refused (unless the refusal is due to a fraudulent application). 
• If you provide appropriate evidence that you have secured sponsorship and your sponsor pays your tuition fees in full.

We may also consider a refund if we asked you to pay the deposit towards a summer pre-sessional course but you then did not meet the conditions of your Masters offer and did not study with us. However, we recommend that you only pay the deposit if you are certain to meet the Masters offer conditions.

We may not refund your deposit if you have not adhered to the ‘Applicant and student responsibilities’ detailed in our Taught Admissions Policy.

Unless your fees are being paid in full by a sponsor, if you receive a deposit refund your course offer will be withdrawn and cannot be reinstated.

You must submit your refund request through the My Enquiries section of the application portal, along with any supporting evidence, by the deadline of 11 November 2024. We will not consider any refund requests received after this date in relation to applications for September 2024 entry.

If your request is approved, we will try to issue your refund within 28 days, though please note that bank processing times can vary and are out of our control. A refund can only be made to the account from which the original payment was made.

We will issue your CAS as soon as we can after you have supplied all necessary data (eg passport details) and either paid your tuition fee deposit or provided appropriate evidence of full funding. You do not need to contact us to request a CAS.

Under Home Office rules, the earliest that we can issue a CAS is six months before the start of your course. For further information about visas, please see our Student visa application guidance.

Please note that the University reserves the right not to assign a CAS if there will not be enough time for you to arrive in Leeds by the latest possible start date for your course.

You can contact us through the My Enquiries section of the application portal or email the Admissions Enquiries team at study@leeds.ac.uk.