Tuition fee deposits for Masters applicants

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 before you have received this email. 

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 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 exemption 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 scholarship or sponsorship award, we advise that you do not pay the deposit while you await the outcome of your funding application, as you may not be eligible for a refund.

We will send you an email to inform you of a Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal. You will need to respond to this message to confirm that you will be paying the deposit.

You will then see a new section in the application portal called ‘My CAS payments’, where you will need to read and agree to 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 pay in your local currency via Flywire (a payment service for 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. Please do not use third-party agents to transfer payments to the University of Leeds, as this significantly increases your risk of being exposed to financial crime.

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

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

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.

You can pay more than the deposit if you wish, but please still select ‘Tuition deposit’ as the payment type as this will help us to allocate your payment to your 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 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.

You will not need to pay a second deposit towards your Masters course once you have completed the summer 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.

The deposit is typically non-refundable. Therefore, you should only pay if you have funds in place for the entirety of your studies and if you are certain that you will be able to arrive in Leeds in time for the start of the course. This includes allowing sufficient time to make your Student visa application and, if applicable, your ATAS (Academic Technology Approval Scheme) application.

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 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 will not consider a refund request made on any other grounds.

If you have not adhered to the ‘Applicant and student responsibilities’ detailed in our Admissions Policy, resulting in the University withdrawing your place, this does not constitute grounds for a refund.

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 Enquiries section of the application portal, along with any supporting evidence, by the deadline of 10 November 2025. We will not consider any refund requests relating to applications for September 2025 entry received after this date.

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.

By paying your tuition fee deposit, you are agreeing to this refund policy.

We will send you an email to inform you of a Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal. You will need to respond to this message to confirm that you are fully funded and provide a final award letter or financial guarantee as proof.

We are not able to exempt you 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 Deposit and Exemption message, please wait until you are able to provide it before responding.

If your sponsor will be paying the funds to you instead of to the University, we will class you as self-funding and you will need to pay the deposit.

For deposit exemption purposes, your award letter or financial guarantee must:

• be from a University-recognised sponsor (this includes governments, corporations, employers, charities and universities, but does not include family members or friends. The University reserves the right not to accept an organisation as a sponsor.)
• 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.

You must also provide your letter to our Student 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 your scholarship covers only part of your tuition fee, you will need to pay the deposit.

If the amount you will be paying yourself is less than £2,000, you will need to pay your portion alongside providing your sponsor letter in order to receive a CAS.

You can let us know that you will be receiving the US Federal Loan in response to the Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal, but there is no need to provide any evidence. As this funding is arranged internally by the University, you will automatically be exempted from paying the deposit once your loan is confirmed.

You will need to provide evidence of your alternative immigration status, such as a passport, share code or visa, in response to the Deposit and Exemption message in the application portal.

We will issue your CAS as soon as we can after you have accepted your unconditional offer, supplied any requested information (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. 

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 should not wait for your CAS before starting to prepare the required information and documents, including financial evidence, for your visa application, to ensure that you are able to apply at the earliest opportunity.

For further information about visas, please see our Student visa application guidance.

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