I see there are not many humanities/social student around here.

I will study the relationship between music and fascism in Spain (probably) at Royal Holloway. As I'm a foreign (UE) student, I'm curious about how well will I get adapted to the UK...

In my case I received interview offers 8 to 10 weeks after having send the application... I don't know if it's the standard but in one of the universities the admissions tutor of the department told me that my application was sent to the department only 4 weeks after it had been received by the admissions office of the university! So I think nothing too bad has happened yet to your applications.

I received my interview offers my e-mail, maybe because to the fact that I'm also an international (EU) student.

Of course if you're applying now for a project which starts on (say) 1st October, things may speed up a bit.

Yes for what I`ve seen it`s not normal for British universities to ask for GRE grades and in any case not for humanities PhD.

IELTS is more an alternative to TOEFL than something that must be done in addition to it, another alternative would be the Advanced or Proficiency Cambridge certificates.

I can only advise you about the TOEFL thing as I am a non-UK student myself. Basically each university has its own policy, but in most cases PhD students are expected to have scored over 580 in the paper-based TOEFL (I dunno the equivalence for the computer-based one but I guess you can find it at toefl.org), and in many cases there are higher requirements for arts students than for science ones. In some universities, they will ask you also for a high TWE mark, usually more than 4.0. And some universities waive the TOEFL requirements if you have completed a degree in English, as in your case. Anyway you will have to ask at the universities/departments you are interested in as there is no national standard.

I'm subscribed to Dialnet which is an alerts service on new publications which match your interests. It covers journals from all over the world but the system itself is Spanish. I'm sure there must be something like that for the UK. Most of the alerts you receive may not be really interesting for your research but it's helpful somehow.

What would you think if the person who wrote the dissertation/ essay/ paper had not English as a first language? I am a bit concerned about this for my next and coming years. I think I don't make many mistakes when I write in English, but I sometimes use expressions which sound "weird" to a native, or my vocabulary is too limited.

Two of my favourite books are The Secret Story as well and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

Other books I can think of are: What a Carve Up (Jonathan Coe), The Rainbow (D.H.Lawrence).

Congratulations and lots of success for the future!

Hi and thank you for your time,
I've applied to four universities to study my PhD and the status of my applications is:
1st choice: as I explained in another topic I got the unofficial acceptance confirmation of the department and they have forwarded my application to the Registry.
2nd choice: last Saturday I got an official admission offer.
3rd choice: just received a mail inviting me to an interview in 3 weeks.
My question is if you think that I should attend this interview. There are several reasons for not attending:
-It seems not to be so good as the 1st and 2nd universities. In fact I included universities 3 and 4 because, being an international student, I didn't know which my chances were, and decided to apply to 2 highly ranked institutions and another 2 as "backup".
-I already got an offer at my second and (hopefully!) first choice.
-I live in Germany and I would have to book holidays, buy a ticket, arrange for accomodation...
But I'm terrified about the possibility that the other 2 universities change their minds and don't accept me!
What would you do? Would you attend or not?

I hope to start at Royal Holloway (the department seems to have accepted me but I haven't received official confirmation) or Birmingham in October.

Hi:

Recently I had a telephone interview for the department I'd really like to do my PhD in, everything went well, yesterday the person who interviewed me wrote me an e-mail to say (unofficially) that the department had recommended the Registry to offer me a position in the program.

I really don't know what does this mean - is admission in the department the real important thing and the Registry is mere Bureaucracy, or do I still have a long way until I know if I'm accepted?

Sorry if this is a silly question but I'm really not that familiar with the British system.

Thanks.

I'm in the same stage as you (applying...) but I think it would be against the rules of "etiquette" (and common sense...) to guarantee you a position before you send a formal application. First at all, maybe the person you corresponded with is pretty sure you will get admitted, but perhaps he's not the person who will take the final decision. Of course it's also not possible for them to know who will apply, and if there will be a candidate who is better qualified than you. Moreover I think it wouldn't be fair to other candidates. How would you feel if you were going to apply to XXXX and somebody told you he had been already offered a place long before the applications closing date?

Hi,

Thank you for your advice, in fact this kind of situation seems more common that I have thought.

At the end I explained her I didn't feel comfortable and told her which aspects shoud her letter emphasize in the case she still wants to write it. But I got another couple of referees in the meantime and I think I will manage to apply even if she doesn't write the reference.

Hi all. I'd like to apply for a scholarship of a Spanish foundation in order to study in the UK and of course I have to include two academic references. This week I wrote to the coordinator of the MA I studied to get one of them and she asked me to write my own reference letter and then submit it to her so that she can sign it.

It's not the first time I'm told to do so by ex teachers/ employers. In the other cases, I simply told the person which aspects did he need to emphasize and then he wrote the letter according to my guidelines. Of course, I never asked anybody to write false or inexact information about me (I think they wouldn't sign it anyway), and this time won't be different. But I really don't like to boast and I think I won't be very comfortable writing such a letter.

Have you faced such a situation? What did you do?

Thanks and regards,

Eva