University of Northampton guide: Rankings, open days, fees and accommodation
Overview
Northampton boasts the only wholly new university campus to be built in the past 30 years. Waterside campus opened in 2018 and is home to 17,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. All new undergraduates are offered a free laptop when they enrol or £500 as an accommodation discount or catering credit. This generous universal benefit is tailored to the university's diverse student profile, which sees more than half of the intake coming from homes where parents did not attend university. A quarter of students are mature returners to education aged over 21 when they start their courses and around half are drawn from ethnic minorities. Northampton has a large number of students following healthcare courses and a significant presence in business and the social sciences. It is expanding its degree apprenticeship provision, with 11 programmes to be added. This is expected to take the number of apprentices on campus to 550 by September 2026. However, like other universities, Northampton is not immune from the financial problems troubling the sector. Faced with a forecasted deficit of £19m in 2024-25, the university has been reviewing its course portfolio (among other things) to help achieve savings of around £13m by 2029.
Paying the bills
Northampton does its bit to ensure all students have the tools to allow them to operate effectively. With its diverse demographic, the laptop offered to all first years can be a game changer. First years have a choice of taking the new laptop, or £500 in either accommodation discounts or catering credits. Students from homes with an annual income of £25,000 of less also qualify for a £400 bursary paid in their third year of study. The university's overall financial support package runs to £2.8m and includes numerous further scholarships and payments, such as those from the chancellor's fund. These are worth up to £750 and paid to students seeking help with the costs of training or attending conferences to enhance employability, the costs of their student project, or those arising from sport, volunteering or other extra-curricular activities. Drawing on the town's history as a centre for shoe making, the Leathersellers' Company Scholarship makes awards of between £500 and £3,000 to students within the university's Institute for Creative Leather Technologies. Northampton is one of few universities to offer all sports memberships - covering playing and training - free of charge. Student residential accommodation is priced from £3,972 for a twin ensuite room in the off-campus Scholars Green student village up to £8,756 for a single studio in the on-campus Waterside Halls student village. Both tenancies are for just under 43 weeks and the university is able to accommodate all first years who want to live in.
What's new?
Seven years on from its opening, Northampton's £300m Waterside campus is still something to shout about. Put simply, all the university's facilities are new with very little mileage on the clock. The attractive campus on the banks of the River Nene, close to the town centre, consolidated the university's previous sites around this East Midlands town. As well as being home to the university's academic facilities, the campus contains a student village, sports facilities, a library and the students' union, housed in a historic railway engine shed, one of the few buildings on the site that are not new constructions. Northampton ranks considerably higher on our three graduate employment metrics - 63rd - for students believing their careers to be on track, 71st= for graduate salaries and 97th= for the proportion in high-skilled jobs than it does in our overall ranking (112th=), allowing the university to make its employment promise with some confidence. This states that any students who are not employed six months after graduating are guaranteed six months' support from a careers development consultant followed by the offer of a paid internship if they are still looking for work. A new BA in criminal justice is planned for September 2026, while this year sees the launch of degrees in physiotherapy, acting for stage and screen, graphic design and hospitality management with pathways in events management and tourism management. There are September 2025 starts for new degree apprenticeships for podiatrists, physiotherapists, midwives, registered nurses, as well as project managers, accounting and finance managers, architectural assistants, digital marketeers, and a programme in leadership and management.
Admissions, teaching and student support
About one in ten students gain a place with a contextual offer which typically reduces the standard entry requirements for courses by between two and three grades (16 to 24 Ucas tariff points). Qualification criteria include living in a postcode with among the highest level of disadvantage or lowest level of university progression rates, receiving free school meals, coming from a military family, having been in care or being a carer, being estranged from parents or having a disability. The university works hard to attract applications through outreach partnerships with Northampton schools with the lowest progression to higher education. Northampton offers aspiration raising activities, taster days and the annual STEAM Northants event on campus pitched at children from Year 6 to Year 13, which attracts 3,000 visitors. Student well-being and mental health is well supported at Northampton with notable features that include applicants being offered an appointment with a member of the university's mental health service or the additional student support and inclusion services team (ASSIST) to ease the transition to university. Counselling and mentoring are offered and 24/7 cover is provided by the Spectrum.Life app. Training is offered to staff on supporting students in distress and students have access to a sensory room and Manspace, somewhere for male students and staff to talk.