How do I apply?
Graduate students and PGCE students will need to apply directly to us for Blackfriars managed accommodation if you have accepted an offer to study at Blackfriars Hall and the University of Oxford. Instructions on how to do this are included in your offer letter.
We allocate rooms on the following principles:
- Blackfriars guarantees housing for the small number of Visiting Students who join Blackfriars Hall for either two terms or a whole year, in accordance with the length of their stay. For Visiting Students, we allocate twin or single accommodation in 16 St John St (further details below).
- Our remaining single rooms are then allocated to new Graduate and PGCE students at Blackfriars on application to the Bursary on a first come first served basis. A small number of rooms may be allocated each year to returning Graduates, for example, to students who may be returning from suspended studies.
- We have one room at Blackfriars that we reserve as an accessible room that is suitable for some (but not all) disabilities. Any applicants for our accommodation who would like more information about accessibility or require reasonable adjustments are asked to let us know your needs as soon as possible in the application process by writing to the Blackfriars Disability Lead, Fr Richard Finn OP, richard.finn@bfriars.ox.ac.uk.
- Blackfriars does not have any self-contained studio accommodation, or accommodation suitable for couples or families.
- On rare occasions, a vacant room may arise which we can offer to a student of another college of the University of Oxford. Applications for such rooms will normally be through the Collegiate Accommodation Support Service (CASS). We do not otherwise accept external enquiries for rooms.
As we allocate rooms, we will take into account the following:
- Your course status;
- room preferences (for example, quiet, alcohol-free, gender preference, other protected characteristics you wish to disclose to help us find the most suitable room for you; – please note our privacy policy on how we treat this information)
- requirements for reasonable adjustments (application for which needs to take place through the Blackfriars Disability Lead and Disability Advisory Service)
- building and room preference, e.g, non-en-suite vs en-suite.
While we aim to align your additional preferences with your building preferences, this is not always possible due to availability and demand for some room types. If we cannot accommodate one of your building preferences, we will then look to accommodate the highest quality room preference available at the time of allocation.
We can normally only make a formal accommodation offer to you after you have accepted your place at Blackfriars and your course offer changes to ‘Unconditional.’ When this happens, we will allocate rooms following our allocation policy and our terms and conditions of application, with every effort made to take into your preferences.
All of our accommodation is normally in high demand, which means we cannot allocate everyone a place in one of their preferred accommodation options.
Allocation of Postgraduate rooms
Postgraduate allocation decisions are confirmed when an applicant’s course offer changes to Unconditional, and we will send your offer to your registered email address.
Can I arrive earlier than my contract period?
Students also applying for accommodation for early arrival (e.g. pre-sessional study) should make these needs known to our team as soon as possible on application. We will endeavour to meet these needs where possible but cannot guarantee vacation residence.
Transferring rooms
Once we allocate a room, we cannot normally transfer you unless another student agrees to switch rooms with you. However, there are some exceptions to this, and we encourage you to get in touch with us at bursary@bfriars.ox.ac.uk to discuss your needs.
Terms and conditions of accommodation applications
Please refer to our terms and conditions for further details of our allocation policy, our “late” buildings policy, and related procedures.