Excel@Uni is not a single bursary with one closing date. The company calls itself a bursary and scholarship management business: companies and foundations hire Excel@Uni to design their bursary schemes, take in applications, pick candidates and then support the students they fund. Students meet Excel@Uni mostly through its online application system, Aura AMS, where each sponsor gets its own portal.
That matters when you search for an “Excel@Uni bursary”. Older listings describe an Excel@Uni stream for students with disabilities, but when we checked Excel@Uni’s website and portals on 1 October 2026, no disability bursary and no Excel@Uni-branded round was listed. Funding through Excel@Uni now means applying to one of the sponsors whose portal it runs.
The general portal and the sponsor portals
Excel@Uni’s Student Hub on excelatuni.com links to every portal it manages. One of them, the Excel@Uni general application portal, hosts applications for several different sponsors at different times of the year. On 1 October 2026 it showed only the 2026 GSF Communities Adhoc Bursary for students living near Globeleq’s operations, marked as closed.
The sponsor-specific portals we opened on the same day carried these programmes, all marked “Applications are currently closed”:
- Capitec: an external bursary for full-time study in 2027 and a separate quantitative skills bursary for maths, statistics, actuarial science and similar majors.
- Coronation: the 2027 Exceptional Student Bursary for commerce students, which opened on 8 July 2026.
- Volkswagen Group Africa: a 2027 bursary for full-time university students; 2026 applicants must apply again.
- Thebe Foundation: the 2027 Dr EJ Mabuza Scholarship for any SAQA- and DHET-registered qualification.
- Hollywood Foundation: the 2027 Future is Bright Bursary, with a separate form for relatives of Hollywood Group staff.
- Roche Diagnostics, Astron Energy, Omnia (for children of permanent Omnia staff), RMA (for children of mining and metal pensioners who are RMA clients) and Globeleq, all still showing their 2025 or 2026 rounds.
Each sponsor sets its own fields, marks and closing date, so read the details card on the portal before you register. Our page on the Roche Diagnostics bursary shows how one of these sponsor schemes works in practice.
What Excel@Uni adds once a sponsor funds you
Excel@Uni’s FAQ explains that the company collects every document digitally through Aura AMS and keeps working with students after selection. Funded students get mentoring, tutoring through its SimplyTutors partner, career-readiness resources and progress tracking on its Mila system. The money, the amount and any work-back terms come from the sponsor, not from Excel@Uni.
Students with disabilities: where to look now
If you came here for the disability bursary described on older listings, the honest answer is that its site does not advertise one at the moment. Email Excel@Uni at hello@excelatuni.com to ask whether a new round is planned, and keep an eye on the general portal, because that is where sponsor rounds without their own portal appear. In the meantime, the Sage external bursary also considers students with disabilities, and our general bursaries hub lists other schemes open to any field.
Getting an Aura AMS application right
- Open the sponsor’s portal from the Student Hub, not from a link someone forwards to you.
- Click “View details” on the programme card and check the year of study, field and residence rules.
- Register, complete the form and upload the documents the card asks for before the sponsor’s deadline.
- Use “Track completed application” on the same portal to follow your application afterwards.
Does Excel@Uni pay bursaries from its own money?
Excel@Uni presents itself as a manager of other organisations’ bursary programmes. The funding comes from sponsors such as Capitec, Coronation or the Thebe Foundation, each through its own portal.
Why does every portal say applications are closed?
The 2027 programmes on these portals had already closed by 1 October 2026, and the older listings still show earlier years. Each sponsor opens its next round on the same portal, so bookmark the ones that fit your field.