Bursary 2026
Three awards of £1,000 for Second Year King's Engineering students
KCLEA, the Association of KCL Engineering Alums, invites all second-year students in King's Engineering to apply for a KCLEA Bursary.
There are three bursaries of £1,000 each. It makes no difference whether you study General Engineering, Biomedical Engineering or Electronics, or whether you are a UK or an international student. All second year Kings Engineering students who apply have the same chance of winning.
What makes this bursary different
Your entry is judged by KCLEA members, all practising engineers who studied at Kings and have made their mark in their professions. They are looking for today's students — future Kings Engineers — who can exceed their achievements.
That is why "Winner, KCLEA Bursary 2026" is worth having on your CV and your LinkedIn profile. It comes from people already working in the industries you are heading into.
What the judges are looking for
What you have contributed to: your society, your course, life at Kings more generally, or work you have done to promote STEM outside the college. This carries the most weight of any single part of your entry.
How you think engineers can make a difference to society. Your own view, in your own words.
Where you want to get to, and how the bursary would help. We want to hear your aspirations.
We look for those who have been stretched through their studies.
Why it is worth entering even if you do not win
Setting out what you have achieved so far and what you want to do next is a useful exercise on its own, and early in your second year is a good time to do it. You will use the same concepts and words in job applications for years.
If you do win, the £1,000 is yours to use as you see fit. Previous winners have put it towards things like attending a conference, visiting places of engineering interest and meeting other engineers, or towards simply having the time to carry on doing more than they already do at Kings.
How to enter
Write about 500 words covering the points above and read the rules below.
- Save your entry as a PDF, with the file name KCLEA bursary <date you send it>.
- Do not put your name anywhere in the entry itself. We anonymise every entry before it reaches the judges.
- Email it as an attachment from your kcl.ac.uk address to bursaries@kclea.org.uk, with the subject line Entry 2026.
- In the covering email, give your name and the course you are on. Nothing else is needed.
Entries open on Monday 28 September 2026 and close at 23h59 on Tuesday 10 November 2026.
Enter early. Once term gets going it is much harder to find a clear couple of hours, and there is nothing to gain by leaving it until the deadline.
Dates to know
- Entries open: Monday 28 September 2026
- Entries close: Tuesday 10 November 2026
- Winners announced at the KCLEA AGM: 15 December 2026
- £1,000 available through the KCL finance system: early January 2027
- KCLEA Annual Lunch: 19 June 2027
The Annual Lunch
Winners come to the KCLEA Annual Lunch on 19 June 2027 as our guests. You will meet KCLEA members over lunch, which is a room full of Kings engineers at every stage of their careers, and you will see the King's Birthday flypast from a new angle.
Keep in touch
Follow the KCLEA page on LinkedIn for reminders about the closing date, and for everything else we run for Kings Engineering students and graduates.
Rules
The KCLEA bursaries, three awards of £1,000 each, are open equally to all second year Kings Engineering students, whether UK or international, on the BEng or Integrated MEng courses in the Department of Engineering (NMES) or the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Science (FoLSM) at King's College London.
KCLEA reserves the right not to award any bursary in the unlikely event that no entry is of a sufficient standard. The decision of the judges is final.
Entries should be about 500 words. We are looking for quality, and entries longer than 600 words or shorter than 400 words are unlikely to meet the judges' approval.
The judges evaluate anonymised entries against the following criteria, with approximate weightings:
- Contribution to college life, society, engineering and/or the advancement of STEM in society: 30%
- How you believe engineers can make a difference to society: 25%
- How the bursary would help your studies: 15%
- Academic progress: 20%
- Quality, clarity and presentation: 10%
Every entrant will have their eligibility validated and verified by KCL staff.
Each student may make one entry only.
The three winners will be able to access the £1,000 in early January 2027 through the KCL finance system.
All entrants declare that no part of their submission has been generated by AI software and that the entry is entirely their own words. An AI scan is carried out on every entry.
Entries must be original work, and must be sent from the student's kcl.ac.uk address with the subject "Entry 2026". The email should contain only the entrant's name and course, with the entry attached as a PDF named "KCLEA bursary <date of sending>". Entries are anonymised by KCLEA before judging, and although we anonymise them, your name should not appear in your entry.
The information in the covering email, being name, email address and course, will be passed to and shared with KCL for verification and validation, and is held under the KCL Privacy Policy.
Entries are processed in the UK and the EU.
KCLEA will inform the winners in December 2026 and will seek their agreement before announcing their names.
KCLEA will hold all aspects of entries for one year after the winners are announced, and may use personal details to contact entrants only for the purposes of the bursary and of KCLEA's involvement with students.
The Data Controller is Peter Weitzel, president@kclea.org.uk
How the Annual bursaries are funded
The bursaries are funded by a donation from KCLEA together with a fundraising effort among our members, who are all Kings Engineering alums.
KCLEA also awards medals to the best final year student on each course in the Department of Engineering and in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Science.