Oxbridge has been the alma mater of many distinguished personalities from South Asia . Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India and Dr Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister, were both educated at Cambridge , at Trinity College and St John's College respectively. Allama Iqbal, the notable Muslim intellectual, and Chaudhury Rahmat Ali, who coined the name ‘Pakistan' without Bengal in 1933, in Cambridge, and who foresaw the body that would come to be Bangladesh before the 1947 partition, also studied at Cambridge.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan visited Oxford before opening MAO College (Aligarh University), which was based on the Oxbridge intercollegiate system, and in the 20th century other notable attendees were the Surahwardys, Indira Gandhi, Liaquat Ali Khan, Fatima Jinnah, Feroz Khan Noon, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan. Rajiv Gandhi was an engineering student at Cambridge when he met his wife Sonia Gandhi.

Many Bengali alumni went on to serve Bangladesh with distinction such as the eminent lawyer Dr Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh's former foreign minister, author of the country's constitution and chairman of the International Law Association, who was educated at Oxford as was the former foreign secretary Farooq Sobhan.

Professor Syed Ali Ashraf, who was Director-General of the Islamic Academy, Cambridge and the Founder and Vice-Chancellor of Darul Ihsan University, Bangladesh, went to Cambridge . He was also a member of the Faculty of Education and a Fellow of Clare Hall, Fitzwilliam College and Wolfson College , in the University of Cambridge .

Other distinguished Bengali alumni who were educated at Cambridge include the industrialist Samson Chowdhury, chairman of the Square Group, Professor Rehman Sobhan, the founder chairman of Bangladesh's leading think tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Barrister Salma Sobhan, and the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who with the Nobel Prize money he received set up two trusts, one of which is in Bangladesh – the Pratichi Trust, that works to promote gender equality. In Professor Amartya Sen's own words:

“I have a very strong association with Bangladesh myself. I come from there and to a great extent grew up in Dhaka . If somebody asked me where is my home I would have to say Dhaka and go more deeply into the village in the Dhaka district where I come from, Manikganj, and a small village called Matto, that sense of belonging is very strong. ”

The Cambridge University Bangladesh Society was founded by Mudasser Chowdhury.