The bench fee is for renting the bench space, and for covering the cost of materials such as chemicals. I got a 1000 quid budget with mine fees, and no bench fees fortunetly for my masters.

Supervisor in a lab? You must be crazy! Mine have popped in occasionally but they really don't spend much time in the lab.

You may want to go round asking a few of the postdocs or late year PhD students about who the thought around the department is a good supervisor. Then make an appointment with them to talk and essentially interview them.

In my opinion a good supervisor remembers your name.... all the rest is just a bonus.

I think as it was said before, apply to a MSc Microbiology that has less fees and possibly funding....

Logical? Yes.

We get ours from our department/supplies. Our department is completely Howie lab coats (those are the ones that go up to the neck.)

I also bought a classic style lab coat from my previous Uni, which is covered in writing (alot not suitable for the lab) from pub crawls!

They aren't discriminating, they are just saying funding is available for UK/EU. They aren't saying you cant apply for that PhD. But you would have to fund it yourself. Common sense here people.

I feel no obligation to pay for a student from another country outside the EU unless that country had a reciprocal amount of funding for those in the UK/EU. That is what the majority of British tax payers think and therefore it wont change. Deal with it.

When I got accepted for my MSc with a 2.2 I was told there was no chance of getting funding. In bio it seems highly unlikely a fresh grad with a 2.2 will be given funding.

Still plenty of them out there. Apply as fast as you can tho. Make sure It is something you can put your heart into though.

As a note BBSRC funding specifies either a 2.1 or higher or equivalent, which includes 2.2 + MSc/MRes. Alot of PhD students I know have 2.1s rather than 1sts. I would hesitantly say more have 2.1s actually.

Go get yourself a funded PhD!

Always worth trying this forum's parent site: www.findaphd.com
Don't just limit yourself to those areas. There are allot of great research groups outside of those geographical areas. My advice is be prepared to go to the research you want to do, not just pigeon hole yourself into looking at only a few institutions. Good luck, you sound like your on the correct track!

Here are a few places that do the conversions for you.

http://www.naric.org.uk/
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/recognisedukdegrees/
http://www.naces.org/

The 4 year undergraduate MA will most likely translate to be the equivalent of a very good university's BA over there. A gpa of 2.5 is very poor. About the equivalent of a 3rd. I received a 2.2 BSc (Hons) at a university at the same level as yours and it apparently translated to a 3.2/3.3 from a good university over there. With yours being a 2.2 MA I feel you would have no problem getting in. There are qualification translation services which can give authenticated degree conversion equivalents. These are usually required for US government jobs

Thank you all! Quarterly sounds great to me. In all fairness as long as i get paid ill be happy!

Yeh, thats around what most people take. It usually includes a masters in with the PhD. As for funding, more people can get funding, but also more people drop out. The grad students over there tend to get less funding tho at least compared to what the BBSRC. Many get less than poverty level, livable as a student but not good. Not sure about other aspects of academic funding but I'm sure your right!

Why not use findamasters.com? It is part of this website. Not sure how successful you will be applying for a postgrad masters with an HND. You might want to look at the UCAS site for the undergrad MEng courses.

You have to apply to the university's graduate system itself plus most likely take the GRE which is the graduate entrance exam. The funding for a PhD 9/10 comes from the university/ research group not individual funding to the person. Also most universitys like for you to enroll as a grad student which involves coursework and classes usualy equating to about 5(like no one graduates in this time) to the average of 7 years all said and done.

Its all about joining societies for the travel fees. Alot of societies will provide students with help for costs to go to relevant conferences. Of course depends on subject area, but I know those in the biosciences are quite nice for it.