IDCORE's Pre-Application Mentoring Scheme

Overseas applicants:  1st October - 14th November 2025 (main application deadline 30th November 2025)

Home/UK applicants:  1st October - 15th December 2025 (main application deadline TBC but likely to be early spring)

Our Pre-Application Mentoring Scheme is designed to support people who feel they may be non-traditional applicants to postgraduate research.

Although the Pre-Application Mentoring scheme is now closed for this recruitment cycle, you can still learn lots about our programme from our mentors - please see the video repsonses to the most popular FAQs here.

Who is a non-traditional applicant?

There’s no single definition. You might identify as non-traditional due to:

  • Personal characteristics – e.g. gender, disability, ethnicity, or neurodivergence.
  • Background or circumstances – e.g. religion, caregiving or family responsibilities, returning to study after working, having studied non-engineering STEM subjects (such as marine biology, chemistry, physics, geology, mathematics).
  • Life experiences – e.g. being from a low-income background or being the first in your family to pursue higher education.

How to engage with our Pre-Application Mentoring Scheme

Many applicants have similar questions. To help, our current students have recorded short video clips sharing their experiences and advice. You’ll find these in the MS Form below, and on our Applicant FAQ page.

We recommend watching all of the clips, even if some don’t seem directly relevant—you may find unexpected insights.

After watching the clips, if you would still like one-to-one support, you can request a mentor by completing and submitting the MS Form.

In the form, we’ll ask you to:

  • Indicate which non-traditional aspects you identify with.
  • Describe your qualifications (so we can confirm you meet programme requirements).
  • Answer a few simple questions.

🔒 Please note:

  • The information you share will not be assessed as part of any future application to IDCORE. 
  • Your engagement with the Pre-Application Mentoring Scheme will not be divulged to the recruitment panel.
  • Details will only be shared with student mentors to help us make the best match. Otherwise, your information will remain confidential. You can read the University’s privacy notice here.

What to expect from mentoring

  • Mentors are current IDCORE students or recent graduates. They can share what the programme is like and how they have found their place in the diverse IDCORE community.
  • Mentoring includes up to 2 sessions (30 minutes each), held online via Microsoft Teams.
  • Demand may be high, so we encourage early engagement. Unfortunately we may not be able to meet all requests.

Next steps

Our Pre-Application Mentoring is now closed for the 25/26 recruitment cycle.  However, the most popular questions asked by applicants, have been answered by our mentors in video form  - you can find these here.  Please have a look at these and if you have any further questions please be In touch with the IDCORE Admin at idcore.admin@ed.ac.uk