hi all, and thanks for thinking with me and all your suggestions!

cryogenics, well i'm going to be a GTA. i don't think they will let me off the fees for that! i checked it out in the uni's guidelines and couldn't find anything. but if they waived the fees for all GTAs they wouldn't have any paying students anymore...

verdy, well, problem is, i'm about to finish my first year, which i financed by using up all my savings. i don't know if taking a "gap year" in the middle of the PhD is viable. but in a way, i guess that's what i am doing - as i am applying for/taking on jobs now. i want to stay immatriculated, though, and keep going on my project as much as i can.

what i can say from my experience: master's courses (MSc/MA) tend to be one-year courses, and they are "taught courses", that means there is no or very little own research involved, unless specifically designated as MRes (masters by research). Master's dissertations tend to be written in ca. 2 months, 10'000 to 20'000 words, and have little to no "real" research component - as such they are more comparable to German or Swiss "Semesterarbeiten" than to "Magisterarbeiten", "Diplomarbeiten", or "Lizenziatsarbeiten". but again, this is a broad generalization. overall, the educational systems are quite different across Europe, and therefore comparisons and establishing equivalencies is very difficult.

hi Andres,
what country are you from?
concerning your question: are you interested in formal equivalence, i.e. which foreign degrees will be accepted as equivalent to which UK degree, for example in application processes? or do you want to know what exactly the level of the degree programmes is?
for the former, you should consult the university's webpages, and there is an agency that certifies equivalencies - it was mentioned on this forum a little while ago, you might find it by running a search.
for the latter, it is hard to give a general answer, you'd have to check the courses you are interested in individually.

So sorry to hear, Sarab! Keep your head up, it's not about you, there is so much luck involved. My supervisor, on telling her the bad news, said:

"I often compare applying for funding to
crumpling up a piece of paper, standing with your back to the
wastebasket on the other side of the room, and trying to throw it in.
You might be able to get slightly better at it over time, but on the
whole it is mostly chance."

Hope all of you who haven't heard yet can relax a bit over the weekend!

So I guess that leaves me - stubborn, ever the optimist even in face of blaring evidence to the contrary - not quitting. I am putting all my hopes, again, on some funding where I have been rejected but encouraged to apply again later. I am now applying for jobs - after all, fees and bills need to be paid, food needs to be bought - in the hope that I will get funding from next February, and that my PhD will not be completely on hold in the meantime. I am just pretending as if some funding WILL come through eventually. Maybe that will just make quitting worse, later, when no money comes. But maybe I am giving myself the decisive last chance.
So, everyone, wish me and all the other desperate unfunded folk out there luck in the job-hunt or whatever we are doing, and send us - well, me, especially - some clever spirits to guide my hands when writing up the next funding application! Onwards and onwards! And then perhaps, eventually, upwards.

Well, so what next? On precaution, I've maneuvred myself into a position where quitting is not really an option. For one thing, I have a contract to teach next year. But more importantly, my partner is now applying for jobs in/near London so we can live together again (and has just been invited for an interview - yay!). That's great! But it would make quitting now really stupid I am NOT going back to Switzerland now that my partner is coming over to England!

Hi all,
Dealing with repeated funding rejections is tough. For me, it makes me wonder if doing a PhD is "right" for me. I know I want to - but no-one always gets what they want. Maybe I have to just be realistic and submit myself to the fact that doing a PhD is a luxury which I, for one, cannot afford. Of course I find it unfair, and believe that I "deserve" to be funded, but reality is not fair and continued denial of the truth won't make it thus. So I am at the point where I either starve, or kid myself into thinking I can really keep doing a full time PhD while at the same time earning enough money to live and pay the fees.(Not saying other people can't do just that. Only that I can't, and I know it. Probably I wouldn't be able to even keep going part-time while working sufficiently to live of and pay the fees.)

where are you, oz? here, the sun does manage to peek out every now and then. but it feels more like indian summer than anything else! the weather is about two months early... i am disgusted that i am wearing long trousers in the beginning of august!

hi jane,
sorry to hear of your troubles. i am in a similar situation except i am lucky to pay less fees. i am also now wondering if/how i should continue.

the only advice i can give you is this: think about/remember WHY you want to do a PhD/this PhD. because, the PhD is just a step, not the final goal in life. so, if you want to get the PhD because you want an academic career and you want to be able to live of doing research, but getting a PhD makes you be miserable, never have enough money, and puts you off research, then getting a PhD/this PhD won't help you achieve your goals. Then, maybe, you should have an eye out for different possibilities for reaching your goal!
else, just persist, persist, persist.
are you part-time?
did you know - many places, once you are in the second year, you can apply for hardship funds.

i don't mean to put you off. just bear in mind that taking a year off to write a proposal might perhaps turn out to be a fruitless investment. it is a risk you have to take and i believe it is worth seriously thinking about it before you rush headlong into it. you should think about how much compromise you are prepared to make: will you do a different project if it means you get funding or do you stick to your project? will you put more weight on the ideal supervisor/institutional setting or on the availability of funding? are you prepared to do a part-time PhD and self-fund if everything else is perfect? can you afford risks - like not knowing where and when the next income will come from? are you prepared to take out loans if necessary? how long will you try to get funding before you give up?

in the UK a large part of international students is funded by their home countries - there is very little funding provided by within the UK for international students. in my home country, however, there is no funding available for PhDs since normally they are employed and get a wage. having EU or even British citizenship does not help, as funding eligibility in the UK is usually tied to 3 years residency in the UK. thus, perhaps mine is a sad story - but after a year or hard work and 10 funding/PhD-employment applications (all of them involved a lot of work to put together), all I've got to show is a small teaching job (and one small application still open).

hi jeroen,
i started my PhD at age 30. i believe age won't be a problem for you in the UK, but might in some other european countries. in Germany for example the cut-off age for much funding is, i think, at 28. on the other hand, in many countries PhDs aren't organized in the British way of most PhD students finding their own funding (or not), but rather often you are employed to do a PhD, so you receive a wage. then age shouldn't matter.
being swiss myself i was/am in a similar situation concerning being used to funding applications. in my experience the situation is quite problematic.

sorry to hear, sindbad. i know, the worst thing about these funding applications is that as long as you don't know the results you can't properly plan - either way. so you are continually working on "perhapses" and "maybes", and if that further adds up with other insecurities in life, it can render you virtually unable to act.

i'm still waiting to hear some success stories here! as long as no-one comes up and says "yay! i got it!" i'm going to half-hope that they somehow mixed it all up

oh dear monkeytab, i'm sorry to hear that. what are you going to do now?

i hope at least some of the people here get positive results!

rick - i'm feeling quite desolate - like everytime i get negative responses to funding applications. it's such a blow - i question myself, my project, everything. especially due to it being another rejection in a series. well, i suppose i'll get over it.

hi guys,
i've heard - no good news for me

hope there is better news waiting for all of you!

the way it went, i got an e-mail from our registry today (1st august). it said they had just received a fax copy of the decisions. we will receive a formal letter later on.

keeping my fingers crossed for you - let us know when you know!