1. Faculty of Environment
  2. School of Earth and Environment
  3. Research degrees
  4. Entry requirements

Entry requirements

The minimum entry requirements for PhD study is a 2.1 honours degree, or equivalent, in a subject relating to your proposed area of research, or a good performance in a Masters level course in a relevant subject.

A first class honours degree (or equivalent) is usually required to be competitive for scholarship funding and a Masters degree is also a valuable asset. 

English language requirements

If English is not your first language, you’ll need to produce evidence of a language qualification before registration as a postgraduate student.

We will accept the following qualifications and scores:

  • IELTS: 6.0 overall with at least 5.5 in all components.
  • TOEFL IBT (Internet-based TOEFL): 87 with a minimum score of 20 in listening and reading, 21 in writing and 22 in speaking.
  • a postgraduate degree from a majority English speaking country.The duration of the degree must be at least 12 months and awarded less than 2 years and 4 months from the proposed start date of the PhD
  • an undergraduate degree from a majority English speaking country. The duration of the degree must be at least 2 academic sessions and be awarded less than 2 years and 4 months from the proposed start date of the PhD.
  • Other English language qualifications are also accepted. 

Tests must be not be more than 2 years old by the start date of your studies with us. If you subsequently defer your offer of a place, please check that your English language certificate will still be less than 2 years old by your new start date.  If not, you will need to take another test and again meet the requirements listed below.

Please note that for postgraduate research study, we continue to be able to accept  IELTS from both Secure English Language Test (SELT) and non-SELT test centres. For entry to programmes below degree level (including the English language pre-sessional programmes), English language qualifications must be listed as UKVI approved SELTs and taken in approved test centres.

Pre-sessional English courses

If your IELTS/TOEFL test result falls slightly short of the requirements (e.g if you have obtained 5.0 in one skill area other than writing, but meet the requirements in all other areas), it may be possible for you to meet the our English language requirements by successfully completing one of the following pre-sessional courses: 

If you need to study for longer than 10 weeks, find out more about our postgraduate pre-sessional English courses.