around 30 scholarships and bursaries to national and international students of exceptional athletic ability.
As of the 2019 league, the university is ranked seventh in the British Universities and Colleges Sport league table.
In 2004, six graduates and one student competed in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, and four alumni competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, including cyclist Paul Manning who won an Olympic Gold. In the 2018 Commonwealth Games, six students and eighteen alumni attended representing England, Scotland, Wales, and Guernsey, and competing in sports including hockey, 1500m, badminton, and cycling. The University had three student athletes competing in Paris 2024, Oliver Morgan in the Olympic swimming, Megan Richter in the Paralympic paratriathlon and Hannah Pearce (South African hockey), as well as a further 14 alumni.
=== Housing ===
The university provides housing for most first-year students, running a guarantee scheme for all those UK applicants who choose Birmingham as their firm UCAS choice. 90 per cent of university-provided housing is inhabited by first-year students.
The university maintained gender-segregated halls until the beginning of the 1998-99 academic year when Lake and Wyddrington "halls" (treated as two different halls, despite being physically one building) were renamed as Shackleton Hall. Chamberlain Hall (Eden Tower), a seventeen-storey tower block, was originally known as High Hall, for male students, and the connected Ridge Hall (later renamed to the Hampton Wing), for female students. University House was decommissioned as accommodation to house the expanding Business School, while Mason Hall has been demolished and rebuilt, opening in 2008. In the summer of 2006, the university sold three of its most distant halls (Hunter Court, the Beeches and Queens Hospital Close) to private operators, while later in the year and during term, the university was forced urgently to decommission both the old Chamberlain Tower (High Hall) and also Manor House over fire safety inspection …
