you can sometimes find deadlines on the pages of the individual departments rather than on the university pages, as they vary.

most departments i know of have rolling applications, that is, they take new students until they are full. some will have a deadline at which time they will start looking at the applications. this will often be in january, sometimes already in december, sometimes later. in popular courses it is necessary to have your application in by that time, since after this the course will invariably be full. but, if the deadline is jan 15th, it doesn't matter if your application gets in in october or on jan 14th. in less popular courses you can easily apply later, and still have chances to get in as late as july. however, chances decline the longer you wait, and further, you will lose chances to apply for funding.

anto, it was my belief that non-eu nationals just have to fulfil two extra conditions, which are
- not having been resident in the UK for the last three years for the main reason of higher education (thus, having been resident in the UK for the last three years for some other main reason, for example, for the reason of living with your husband/family, or for working)
- having indeterminate leave to remain.

EU nationals do not have to fulfil those two criteria but only the three years residence (to get full funding) or three years residence in the EU (outside of the UK) to get fees only funding.

so, in fact, someone with Indian citizenship for example, who has grown up in the UK and lived here with his/her family is most likely eligible for full RC funding. however, UK citizens who have not grown up in the UK are not eligible (or eligible for fees only if they have been living in the EU).

a PhD programme in the UK? or where?

where have you been living for the last three years?

in the UK, if you have EU citizenship and have been living in the UK for three years before you start your PhD, you can get full funding from the research councils. if you have EU citizenship, even if it is British, but haven't been living in the UK for the last three years, you can get "fees only" funding from the research councils.

check German sources, and contact the university where you will be going.

just a thought: what really differentiates qual and quant methods is often not that one is concerned with numbers the other with words, but the mindset of the researcher, the kind of question you are asking. like, often quant people will be "hypothesis testing" or "theory falsifying" whereas qual people will be "concept generating" or "theory generating". but this is not a must. i believe you can go about analysing quant data very similarly as qual data, in a "concept generating" manner. i don't have experience with this but perhaps it is also possible to go about analysing qual data with a quant mindset.
so maybe "mixed" as opposed to "both" methods would be just that. not "generating a theory/concept with qual, then testing it with quant, then refining it with qual" but "using quant and qual data both to generate concepts" and/or "quant and qual data to test/verify/falsify concepts/theories".

i think it is catching up with me now, too.

ah, why can't you be sick when you're procrastinating anyway, instead of when you have sooo much work to do and deadlines looming? bad, bad timing.

however... as you have been in the UK for a while, the most important question is: do you have indeterminate leave to remain? or are you on a (student) visa?

because: the research councils' eligibility criteria have very little to do with nationality but LOTS with residence. if you have indeterminate leave to remain AND have been resident in the UK for 3 years, then you could be eligible, no matter your nationality. there might be a slight problem with having to have been in the UK "not for primarily educational reasons" but this clause is wobbly at best.

i think you should look at your research council's criteria very carefully and discuss them with your prospective supervisor.

hey, yes, rejection is terrible. it's happened to me often regarding funding, and you'd think you get used to it, but you don't. it hurts every time. i've heard of postdocs and senior lecturers who are devasted when they get any kind of rejection, myself, everytime i want to curl up in a ball, quit, i feel terrible for a while.
what i'm saying is that it is totally normal to feel really bad about such rejections. they are never fair. there is nothing you can do about it.
be angry! be upset. let it all out. and then get over it. put the anger aside, calmly consider your options, and go "onwards and upwards"! wherever that might be. (it will be hard to reach the calm if you don't really allow yourself the anger and upset first)

i think there is no general answer. coming from abroad and not knowing anyone i was quite happy in my residence hall for my first year. it was pragmatic - no need to worry about furnishing, internet-connection all organized, no hassle with "bills", apply without having to "view", ... - and i was lucky to have great flatmates. also my hall had some nice perks like free DVD rentals which came in handy on lonely evenings, and i think it would be impossible to get a private room in a similar location with similar quality for the same price.
that said, some friends had terrible experiences in their halls. rule of thumb - if a hall, then choose a mainly-postgraduates hall!
any halls also have their downsides. frequent nightly firealarms... bureaucracy... the floorplans can have quite isolating effects... and in my case, halls were definitely not the cheapest way to go.

without deadlines, once the high expectations on you are there, it can be hard to let good be good enough. to get out of that - well i guess i'm not the best person to give advice! perhaps a conscious decision that you are working for yourself and not to live up to anyone's expectations? reclaim your project as YOUR project instead of something that should demonstrate that the expectations in you are legitimate? ah, easier said than done, i suppose...

hm, yes, as sim said nicely, we've got our own demons which is why it's so lonely. but then, we do share the experience with some others out there
i find that deadlines are useful, because they make me finish up something even though i feel it is not finished yet, not good enough. so for me, they help me deal with the pressure of having to live up to expectations. i constantly feel like a fraud - i know that i make a confident impression on people and appear bright, but tend to feel i'm just pretending, myself. so every time i submit some work i worry irrationally that i will be found out for the fraud i am.

(the worst, it would seem, of course, is if they don't know much about your topic but ARE very opinionated. that, i guess, should be avoided )

well, since you are heading for a non-academic job, i WOULD look out for the university's reputation.

since you don't know the people in question personally, i would look out less for their reputation, but for their research interests. do they have the necessary expertise to guide you in your research? do they have similar research interests? if they have tons of publications on the topic in the 1990s but not any since then, it seems their interests have changed...

people who know more about your topic will tend to be more opinionated, i'd say. this can be a good thing - you can grow by rubbing with your supervisor. at least the advice they are giving you is founded on expertise. you can still always take it or leave it but it has its value in any case.
if they know less about your topic or are less opinionated that is fine - as long as you don't need any guidance. they will just keep on saying "that's fine, just go ahead"...

corinne, i have taken up my self-doubts with my supervisor too, and she told me i was doing fine. well, sometimes i think, i'm sure she is the expert, i'll just believe her. but mostly i think, hmmm but she hardly reads what i send her and doesn't really know what i am doing so how could she know if i'm doing fine or not?
overall i think it does do me good to hear from her that i'm on track. but at times i feel what i need is someone to take my worries seriously, not someone to pat me on the shoulder and say "there, there". i think what would be best for my confidence would be someone to really critizise my work AND point out my strenghts. do you have someone who could do that for you? take a piece of your writing apart, critically find all weaknesses, but also the good bits?

it could also mean that that person has developed means to successfully advise PhD students, makes supervision meetings into "win-win" situations, enjoys talking to PhD students because he/she realizes how much can be gained from them, has a great overview over the subject area and will thus be able to advise you perfectly, ...
so, really, at the end of the day, the "reputation" does not answer your question. i would advise to focus more specifically on what you expect from a supervisor - and then go see if your "candidate" supervisors will give you that.

sunnyday, don't get me wrong - if your supervisor is a nobel prize winner, his/her reputation would sure make a difference on your non-academic job prospects. i guess you just have to evaluate: will a prospective employer, when I write on my CV that I was supervised by x, recognize the name and be aware of that person's reputation? if not, well, how should the reputation have an influence?

the "reputation" can mean a lot of things that could help or hinder you successfully completing a PhD in a reasonable time. it can mean that that person is constantly away giving lectures on all continents and never available for advising you. it can mean that he/she is very much focused on his/her own career and not prepared to sacrifice time (which could be used for own research) on any PhD students. it could mean that he/she looks down on people who do not want to go into academia.