Grrr just looked at the Ted Baker site - also blighted with smocks.

Sienna Miller has a lot to answer for!

Olivia, UK stores a generally rubbish at providing business wear/smart-casual wear for women. I envy Americans who have a huge choice of womenswear for every style, shape and budget.

On the British front for smart-casual try:
Ted Baker
Thomas Pink (beautiful shirts)
Charles Tyrwhitt (always have a sale on)
Toast (currently blighted with the smock-look, but normally sell beautiful boho style clothes).
Boden (goes for the yummy mummy market).
House of Fraser

All the above have online stores. Unforunately, they are all expensive and currently beyond most PhDs' budgets (although some bargains can be had in the sales).

4 mths is not too bad if this includes all the research, but if it's just writing-up pre-existing notes/findings etc, then it's too long.

It's important not to be a perfectionist, but rather get things down on paper. I procrastinate too often about getting things 'just right', and then end-up having to extend the deadline and often rushing work.

£65k sounds about right.

I read in the Guardian a while back that some international students (usually in the sciences) end up with a debt of £200k!

PhD by Publication is normally reserved for academics who have published substantive work, but not obtained a PhD. It's highly unlikely someone would produce PhD standard work without any supervision and/or being faculty member. Therefore, the application panel would just throw it back and refuse registration for the viva.

Go for the one which you ultimately feel the most comfortable with i.e., consider the project, the people you will work with, the university, the surroundings etc.

Ranking is important, but you're choosing between established universities here, so it shouldn't make much difference. It's not like we're talking Oxford v. Ex-Poly. Also note that Liverpool is a member of the Russell Group and this is being increasingly used to denote the top 20 uni's in the UK (aka the British Ivy League).

IMO, your choice of project, supervisor and university are the most important things (and in that order too).

On a separate note, I know Liverpool very well, and in all honesty it wouldn't particularly be somewhere I'd pick for PhD life. The location and environment of St Andrews would be a big persuasive factor for me.

"Do you think it'd be unreasonable for me to pursue the grant app with just me and the professor, without the other PhD student?"

This is hard to say. You don't want to come across as awkward, but it depends on how the department in question works, and the grant money at issue etc.

Personally, before going any further, I'd want to clarify with the potential supervisor what role the other PhD student has within this project, and who else will be involved, what grant money is being applied for, and who would I report to etc.

The fact the supervisor has shifted this issue to another PhD student would raise concerns for me.

I'm sure stealing ideas is very common - although what you describe sounds more like they want to collaborate with you.

Similar to your story, I applied for a position at an institute a few years ago, and shortly afterwards one of their own new PhDs students started working on exactly the same topic as me. This could have just been pure coincidence...

The simple way to get around these problems is to publish your ideas asap.

If you don't wish to pursue PhD with the prospective supervisor, you need to explicitly tell the PhD student and supervisor that you do not wish your proposal to be used for a grant application, and it will be used with another university etc.

Nope, I'm working too. I tend to work everyday, although whether I actually produce written work or not is another matter.

^^ that's a great idea. It's shame we don't have a better forum to administer such a thread. I'm not sure about copyright rules (possibly we could be breaching some university service agreement), but we are all students, and we are all using the articles for our own personal use. Academics share articles all the time via email - so I can't see the problem as long as content is not published on the forum.

Concerning the distinction between ethnicity and nationality...it shouldn't really be necessary to make one as the definition of race discrimination is so wide that ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, race and colour all fall under it. As these equality monitoring forms are for statistical purposes the categorisations are kept simple and directed to reflect the major ethnic demographics of Britain, not the world.

I can see the confusion though. For instance, on most forms it asks for my 'ethnic group', and I'm offered 'White British', but this actually describes my 'colour' and 'nationality', while my ethnic group/cultural identity is actually 'English'.

I recently read an application for the Uni. of Manchester which not only wanted to know my age, gender, race, and disability status, but also my sexuality and religion (obviously to reflect new legislation). While I've always supported equality monitoring (particularly since the Stephen Lawrence case) I felt somewhat uncomfortable about handing over so much personal information to a public body, and pondered whether such information could actually be abused rather than used for equality schemes. Officially all this information never reaches the hands of the interviewers and is simply given to HR for data monitoring...hmmm.

^^ that's what I was thinking, although it is tempting.

I was speaking to a fellow PhD researcher today who said they had put a seminar given as part of an academic interview process on their CV.

I've never considered doing this as I thought is was 'not the done thing' and is somewhat cheeky, but the idea does seem appealing for padding out one's CV and particularly if the presentation/seminar was given at a prestigious institution.

Is this common practice or am I right to think it's wrong?

You may wish to seek help from the Language Dept in your university and attend additional courses. Your university/admissions has judged you capable of writing in English, so they should be helping you if you fall below standard.

In addition to using a copy-editor, I suppose there is nothing stopping someone writing a thesis chapter in their native tongue and then having it translated either (???).