At interview some departments ask a PhD student to show you around. Before you turn up for interview, ask if you will have such an opportunity. The atmosphere within any particular lab can make a big difference.

If you don't feel that you can talk to your supervisor, your postgraduate advisors, departmental postgraduate tutor or department head then your students union should have an Education and Welfare officer or a Postgraduate Officer who will be able to take up your problem and find the appropriate person for you to speak to. Universities do not like losing students and will be keen to resolve your dificulties.

As far as we can tell it is not posible to skip any years of the MPharm degree. Try the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain web site for information. They have to approve all MPharm courses in the UK.

The money is tax free (making it equivalent to £9500 gross) Plus you can earn the up to single persons tax allowance (over 4000) tax free on top of this if you take on other work. It is more usual in science for a home student to receive around £11000, but it depends on who is funding your research. You should remember that a very high proportion of people doing a PhD in the UK (international students and those studying outside of science and medicine) receive far less than this and have to pay course fees on top.

You're eventual PhD will stand you in good stead for a job in the pharmaceutical industry.

Pay for lab teaching does vary but will probably be between 10 and 20 pounds per hour. The number of hours available for each PhD student can end up being very low, as everybody wants the extra income, you may only get a few hours work per term. If you are going to rely on this money, then ask what the average number of hours is (and for a rough idea of the rate of pay).

Glad to see the festive season's revived this thread. I feel like we should post Ann a FindAPhD mug for adding message 100 - but we'd never know who the real Ann is, and we haven't got any mugs.

It is doubtful that your acceptance of a place this early will be legally binding. However you should check this out, they are unlikely to withdraw your offer of a place for asking 'what happens if I don't get the right degree result or if my family circumstances change and I need to take up employment instead'. That way you'll find out if you are committing yourself to paying the course fees.

You should ask any questions you have about the course at your interview.

Just to clear this up, most studentships are advertised between November and March. Closing dates vary, and some supervisors choose not to use a closing date, and interview people as they apply - when they find a candidate they like the position is filled.

The skills required depend on the subject you wish to research. In science good laboratory skills can prove almost as important as intellectual ability. In areas of social science you may need to interview large numbers of people and communication skills will be a big factor. In the humanities you may need large amounts of patience to trawl through archive material whilst looking for a needle in a haystack.

Most successful PhD students in any subject are intelligent, persistent and are capable of lateral thinking. You should also be good at surviving on a low income.

Search the web sites of Canadian universities for your area of research and write to the academics you find.

JASON is a search engine that contains information about postgraduate scholarships available to Australian students wishing to study at home or abroad, and to international students wishing to study in Australia.

Distance learning Masters degrees are becomming more and more common. But be warry of brand new courses, if there are teathing troubles it will be difficult to get them sorted from a distance. You should also be aware that if you are doing either course properly it will be impossible to do a PhD and a separate Masters course at the same time.

You need an English language qualification before you can start a PhD in a UK university.

Sie benötigen eine englische Sprachqualifikation, bevor Sie ein PhD in einer Britischen Universität beginnen können.

Normally we move messages like this to the General section, so that they don't get in the way of more interesting questions. However, at most we get time to do this once a day and the forum does get blocked up with them sometimes. We do not leave any interesting messages in the General section, so you shouldn't miss anything.

Thanks to postdoc & new year for trying to reduce the number of questions to whom the only answer is 'sorry, it's not that easy'. Sadly I think we're just going to have to live with them, people don't seem to notice that none of them ever get replied to (except sarcastically).