Three questions usually arrive together: can I study a masters in the UK, can my family come with me, and can I stay and work afterwards. They are treated as separate problems and they are not. The answer to the second one has changed, and most of the advice still circulating predates the change.
Taught masters students can no longer bring family
Since 1 January 2024, students on taught postgraduate courses cannot bring a partner or children to the UK as dependants. This covers the MSc, the MA and the MBA, regardless of how long the course runs or how much money you can show.
Before that date, any postgraduate course of nine months or more qualified. That route is closed, and it closed quietly enough that guides written in 2023 still describe it as open.
The course type decides it now, not the course length and not your finances. Your university confirms the classification on your CAS.
Three exceptions, and one of them is the reason people apply for scholarships
- Doctoral study. A PhD or equivalent qualifies.
- Research-based masters. An MRes, or any programme where the research component is larger than the taught component measured by student effort. The distinction is set by the university, not by the title.
- Government-sponsored study on a course longer than six months. The sponsorship has to cover full fees and living costs. A partial award does not qualify, and neither does a university scholarship.
That third exception is worth reading twice. Chevening, Commonwealth and equivalent national awards fall inside it. So a fully funded scholarship does not only pay for the degree; on a taught masters it is the difference between arriving with your family and arriving alone.
This changes what a scholarship is worth to an applicant with a partner or a child. The money is the visible part. The dependant eligibility is the part nobody puts in the brochure.
Staying afterwards: the Graduate Route
The Graduate Route lets you remain in the UK after finishing, with no job offer and no employer sponsor. It currently runs for two years after a bachelor's or masters, and three years after a doctorate.
A reduction to eighteen months for undergraduate and taught masters graduates has been announced, with doctoral study unaffected. The commencement date has moved more than once in official communications, so treat any specific date you read as provisional and check the current position before planning around it.
Sources: Home Office guidance via university visa pages (Oxford, LSHTM), and sector reporting on the Graduate Route review; read August 2026. Immigration rules change frequently. Verify against gov.uk before making a decision.
One point that gets missed: Chevening scholars cannot use the Graduate Route at all. The award carries a two-year return requirement to the home country. For some applicants that fits the plan exactly. For others it removes the reason they were looking at the UK in the first place, and it is better to know that in September than in June.
What it costs to bring someone
| Item | Per dependant |
|---|---|
| Visa application from outside the UK | £558 |
| Immigration Health Surcharge | £776 per year |
| One year, one dependant | ≈ £1,334 before maintenance funds |
A partner who qualifies can work full time, employed or self-employed, with no hourly limit. That matters to the household arithmetic more than the fee does.
The order these decisions belong in
Most applicants decide the country first, then the course, then discover the visa position. Reversed, it looks like this.
- Decide whether family accompaniment is a requirement or a preference. It narrows the field before anything else does.
- If it is a requirement, the shortlist is doctoral study, research-based masters, or a fully funded government scholarship. Everything else is out, however good the programme.
- Then check what you want to be doing in the two years after graduation, because a scholarship with a return requirement and a Graduate Route plan cannot both be true.
- Only then choose the programme.
Done in this order, the visa rules narrow the shortlist honestly and early. Done in the usual order, they arrive as a surprise after the deposit is paid.
Where I come into this
The three questions belong together and are almost never asked together. Someone researching programmes and someone researching visas are usually reading two different sets of pages, and the contradiction between them surfaces late.
What I work on is the decision underneath: whether the UK is the right destination given what you need it to do, and if it is, which route makes that possible rather than which programme sounds best.
Is it the writing, or the decision?
We start with a short form. Six questions, two minutes. Which of the two needs work is usually clear on a first read.