Entry requirements

Our regular standard of admission is usually a 2.1 honours degree.

Required documents

1. Academic Transcripts and Degree Certificates
2. CV
3. Research Proposal
4. Two References
5. Named Supervisor Information

Fees and funding

Fees

2027/28

• UK: To be confirmed [26/27 fee was £5,238]
• International & EU: £33,708

Prices are based on the annual fee for full-time study. Fees for part-time study are half the full-time fee.

Irish nationals who are living in the Common Travel Area of the UK, EU nationals with settled or pre-settled status, and Internationals with Indefinite Leave to remain status can also qualify for home fee status.

• Fee status and policies

Alumni discount

We offer a 15% tuition fee discount to eligible self-funded alumni starting a Postgraduate Taught (PGT) Masters or Postgraduate Research (PGR) programme in the 2027/28 academic year.

This includes University of Glasgow graduates and those who have completed a Study Abroad programme, Exchange programme, International Summer School or Erasmus programme with us. This discount can be awarded alongside most University scholarships. No additional application is required.

• Full details of our Alumni Discount

Possible additional fees

• Re-submission by a research student £540
• Submission for a higher degree by published work £1,355
• Submission of thesis after deadline lapsed £350
• Submission by staff in receipt of staff scholarship £790

Depending on the nature of the research project, some students will be expected to pay a bench fee (also known as research support costs) to cover additional costs. The exact amount will be provided in the offer letter.

Support

We are a member of the Scottish Universities Physical Alliance (SUPA), a research alliance in physics between six Scottish Universities (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, St. Andrews, Strathclyde, West of Scotland). The SUPA graduate school gives Glasgow students access to expertise from all the SUPA institutes through the various courses.

The school has a vibrant research colloquia programme delivered by recognised experts.

You will be part of a Graduate School which provides the highest level of support to its students. The overall aim of our Graduate School is to provide a world-leading environment for students which is intellectually stimulating, encourages them to contribute to culture, society and the economy and enables them to become leaders in a global environment.

We have a diverse community of over 750 students from more than 50 countries who work in innovative and transformative disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. An important part of our work is to bring our students together and to ensure they consider themselves an important part of the University’s academic community.

Being part of our Graduate School community will be of huge advantage to you in your studies and beyond and we offer students a number of benefits in addition to exceptional teaching and supervision, including:

• A wide-ranging and responsive research student training programme which enables you to enhance your skills and successfully complete your studies.
• Mobility scholarships of up to £4000 to enable you to undertake work in collaboration with an international partner.
• A diverse programme of activities which will ensure you feel part of the wider-research community (including our biannual science slam event).
• A residential trip for all new research students.
• The opportunity to engage with industry-partners through training, placements and events.
• Professionally accredited programmes.
• Unique Masters programmes run in collaboration with other organisations.
• State-of-the-art facilities including the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre and the Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre.
• Highly-rated support for international students.

Email: scieng-gradschool@glasgow.ac.uk

Collaborations

Our research groups work with a range of international collaborators and students have the opportunity to visit and work at a range of international institutes and laboratories including:

• CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Switzerland)
• Jefferson Laboratory (USA)
• Ligo lab (USA)
• ICRR (Japan). 

Resources

Our in-house research facilities include:

• The Glasgow Laboratory for Advanced Detector Development (GLADD) developing the next generation of advanced sensor systems for particle physics experiments, medical applications and security systems.
• The SRDG Materials Characterisation Laboratory, developing materials for gravitational wave detectors.
• The Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre, researching the atomic, electric and magnetic structure of materials using one of the world's highest performance electron microscopes.
• ScotGrid, providing leading edge e-science facilities.
• The Optics group provides world-class facilities in structured light and quantum imaging.

Our research teams are also partners in many major national and international research projects including:

• The ATLAS experiment at the LHC at CERN, studying the fundamental structure of matter at unprecedented energies.
• LHCb at the LHC in CERN, studying the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry.
• The GEO660, LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaborations, seeking to detect gravitational waves and use these as an additional probe of major astrophysical phenomena.
• Jefferson Lab, the top nuclear physics research facility in the United States.
• The SuperSTEM facility (the EPSRC National Facility for Aberration-Corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy) running one of the highest resolution electron microscopes in the world, and accessible to scientists from all round the UK and the rest of the world.
• The award winning NASA RHESSI X-ray mission, studying solar flares and several other forthcoming international space missions such as ESA's Solar Orbiter.
• The F-CHROMA project, focusing on space-based and ground-based multi-mode, multi-wavelength study of solar flares.

Our staff and students have the opportunity to use these facilities, and PhD students are in some cases seconded to external facilities for a significant part of their research.

Graduates leave with numeracy, problem-solving skills, a capacity for logical thought and the capability to apply abstract concepts to the real world, as well as experience of working in teams. Career opportunities for physicists can be found in research in universities or in many areas of industry: high tech manufacturing, semiconductor, materials, finance, consultancy and teaching.

How to apply

Our Online Application Form and Applicant Self Service will be unavailable from 08:00-14:00 (GMT) on Thursday 29 October for essential maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.