Depends who is calling. If it's one of those Dutch lottery winning things then I put the receiver on the desk and leave them to go through their recorded message, all the time costing them for the phone call.

If it's some poor mug in a call centre (probably me in 2.5 years time), I quickly say "thanks but no thanks" and put the phone down. You are doing the person a favour anyway as they can then at least move on to the next person.

perhaps we should link this to the final year funding thread!

erm, right, well, hmmm, anyway.....

Yes you should. If their work is directly relevant to what you are doing then omitting it would be even worse. Also, academics love it when you cite their work (assuming you do it correctly, that is!).

It's good to see that the many hours of thought that fellow posters hvae put into helping the original poster have been completely ignored in favour of a pointless and somewhat creepy pursuit of a woman who doesn't welcome his attention.

There's nothing wrong with telling them that you have other applications on the go. This suggests to them that you are serious about taking a PhD. You could say that this is the project you really want to do (and explain why). In terms of accepting the other one ahead of an offer on this one, you may as well do so. You are not contractually bound to them and they can't make you do a PhD.

I thought you were supposed to be going to see your doctor?

It gets very addictive, particularly when you win. Get out now while you can!

Jeans and T shirts round here (like the lecturers in fact). Mind you, I do wear my better jeans and T shirts when I'm teaching!

Welcome back Athina - glad to have you back. I've replied to your email!

The winner gets to start off the 10 billion green bottles thread.

You've got to be in it to win it.

I agree with Zingo - get to know the powers that be and in particular your prospective supervisor. I had several weeks of informal discussions with my prospective supervisor even before submitting the application. We eventually got to the stage where they improved my application such that they were looking for it amongst all of the other applications when they arrived at the university.

So go on a charm offensive so that you get ahead of the other candidates!

Ok, the sorts of things to look for:

1) RAE ratings of departments
2) The profile of the prospective supervisor(s) and later whether you think you can get on with them for 3 years.
3) Will you be joining a research group?
4) Whether you like the prospective town.
5) The opinions of existing PhD students.
6) The topic of course!
7) Gut feeling

Anyone anything else?

It's Equal Opportunities Policy at its stupidest. If they already have the person they want there really isn't any point falsely raising other people's hopes. Unfortunately, the public sector is very big on implementing this procedure.