I really love to know how PhD students in UK can afford paying mortgage while studying. I was getting paid $ 22,000 as a PhD student (ranges were usually between 21K to 24K) and we were leaving in a small rental but all the money I was receiving were just enough to live a bare minimum. Note that the average house (including apartments) in Canada is $350,000 and as a first time buyer, it is expected that you put 20% down payment which is $70,000. I did not know any student that could afford putting down payment and pay mortgage. I have visited UK few times and every time I was puzzled how people can afford to live in such expensive places (compared to the US and Canada) with the advertized salaries. I think I read somewhere that most people live on credit but this is not the case at least in Canada.

The thing is that I have some publications with her even though she did not provide any input into these papers. Now it seems that in her group, it is expected that you include all of the people work in the lab as co-author and frankly speaking it is unethical and this is a good reason to not include her... is not it?

lol...of course she wants "crediting"... who does not specially when someone else is doing the work and one just takes credit for it. :)... the question is does she deserve crediting?

I am planning to submit some results from my second postdoc research to a journal for publication but now I am facing a dilemma on whether I should include the name of my "so-called" supervisor on manuscript or not... Basically some of the work was done in the lab under her name (that she inherited from a retired colleague without spending any money on the lab facilities). She has left my university for another position in different country and she has really no input for any of my results (in the last 3 years) and is just a "supervisor" on title (I have not seen her over 2 years!)

I personally feel that it is unethical to include her as an author... The problem is that I will need her as a reference for my future job search and she is very "publication-oriented" for her career and she knows that I am writing a paper. I can send the paper to her for her feedback but then again she has no input on results and usually does not provide any useful feedback and I do not think giving feedback is "co-authoring".... and let's be frank, I am sick of having my work done with her name attached without really receiving any input from her... Can I just leave her under acknowledgement and thank her for letting me using "her lab" instead of including her as the co-author and still hope that she would give me a good reference for my future work search?

I was reading a book on MBA programs and it was said that that average age for MBA students has gone from mid 35+ in 1990s to around 27 in recent years. Can you imagine how much of business experience a 27 year old would bring to the table? The higher educational institutes would like to hire younger student because it is easier and more cost-effective for them to shape the student the way they want. They younger they are the less challenge the university faces and they can make more money out of the younger one. This is sad that the experience you bring to the table has no value any more to the universities.

I am not sure if this helps but 1.5 year into a PhD is not that long to produce any paper. I am sort of co-supervising a left-over PhD student from my former supervisor (long story) and she is in 5th year and has not published anything really meaningful but has some paper conferences. She is hoping to get published in 6th year. Needless to say, her funding was finished a year ago. So you still may have some chance to get good work esp in somewhere like PMI.

RA as research assistant or RA as research associate?
At my institute, usually PhD student after passing their candidacy are called research assistant (a weightless title) until they finish their PhD. So no additional salary is given to research assistant title.
On the other hand, research associates are people who usually have a PhD and hired to do research for a professor or the department (they have no TAing or teaching responsibility unless included in a separate teaching contract ). Postdocs are also included in this category. They usually get salaries much higher than PhD students and they are technically employed by the university so they get some university benefit as well.

Many profs recruit masters and PhD students to justify their own existance in the system. It used to be that each prof produced a handful of PhD's thoroughout his/her career and publish few good papers every now and then when they really had somethings to publish. Nowadays things are a bit different with publish or perish culture, H-index, impact factors and RG scores, they are all trapped in their own rate race. I know some assistant or junior associate profs at third tier ranking universities in their early 40's that have already prouced 10-12 Phds and published 100+ journal papers... Most of the research they do is to reconfirm things that are already known.... There is not really much of discoveries happening these days....Most of the scientific research done these days are either corporate science or some intellactual masterbation...

It all depends which school you apply and which country you got your bachelors or masters . I assume you are applying for PhD. If so, the top tier schools usually consider 3.85+ with a very good GRE score and strong letters of recommendations or good publication records. They may say 3.5 is acceptable to apply but that's because they want to have a pool of applicants to choose from and also the application fees are another source of income for the schools... the acceptence rate for the top tiers is 5% to 15%.

Second tiers usually are around 3.6 to 3.7+ with a good GRE but it also depends on the department and supervisor.

Congrats awsoci! That's really exciting… 3.5 years ago I finished my PhD and I was very happy that I achieved what I always dreamt! As for postdoc… I am not sure what fields you are working but in chemistry (my field) you really need a lab to work and unfortunately there are not many of them out there… so the university becomes one of the very few places that you can work… and unlike some social sciences (i.e. finance, economy, anthropology, etc) where you can just walk to a pub and make a very interesting conversation with locals, my field bores hell out of them so I usually hide the fact that I have a PhD! :)…. But I think the PhD and postdoc problem is also extended to down under (read the transcripts if you cannot open it):

Australian Postdocs in Asia - Part 1

And whilst we are discussing the value of doing a PhD and whether postdoc salaries are compatible with minimum wages or exceeding them:

1- Research funds are disapperaing but university administration personnel and costs are expanding.
2- University presidents and deans salaries are skyrocketing to a CEO type levels (i.e. salaries for most of Canadian university presidents are in $400,000 to $600,000 range with a big fat multi million dollars compensation at the end of their term).
3- And while tenure track and research associate positions become rarer, the universities recruit more and more PhD students as in the name of science but intact they are just cheap labours.

If these signs do not tell you about a Ponzi scheme, I am not sure what else would do …