I have applied to 16 UK universities for a PhD in Education commencing October, 2009 and the first three - Uni of Birmingham, Uni of Southampton and the Institute of Education (Uni of London) have all responded in the affirmative. This places me in a dilemma as the deadlines are 3 months from now for these three. Some of the other answers pending include Exeter, Nottingham and Oxford. I thought I'd consult the PhD oracles whose earlier responses were helpful. Thanks in advance.

Institute of Education has great resources and very good people on board. I think you'll need to consider your reasons for why you'd want to study at any of these places. Supervisor, funding, resources, location etc.. Do a pros/cons list. I don't mean to sound harsh, but applying to 16 universities suggests to me that you haven't given much consideration to these details. You need to work out where and with whom you wouldn't mind spending at least 3 years of your life.

Set yourself an absolute deadline for when you need to make a final decision and let your choice of university know your acceptance. In the meantime, do your research into all the places you have applied to. As the previous reply suggested, write a pros and cons list for each, taking into consideration project/interest, prospective supervisor/department/research group, university, location, extra curricular/support opportunities etc. Based on this, narrow it down to a short list. Then, I would highly recommend actually visiting the places on your short list to get a feel for where you will be spending the next few years of your life to see if you can imagine yourself being happy there, because speaking from experience, not doing this and then finding yourself being somewhere you dont want to be can really affect your motivation to do the research.

Depends on supervisor. Inst of Ed has some great people, attended a seminar by a leading scholar from there the other day, and earlier at Bristol, but he is emeritus frm next yr perhaps dunno....depends on sup...and money.

Depends on supervisor. Inst of Ed has some great people, attended a seminar by a leading scholar from there the other day, and earlier at Bristol, but he is emeritus frm next yr perhaps dunno....depends on sup...and money.

Hi Bourdieu

I'm doing my PhD at IoE and love it. Great bunch of folks, great resources. Other than that, I think Nottingham and Exeter are okay. Bristol, if it's in your list is also quite good, as is Manchester. It depends, I guess, on your specialist area, who the leading researchers in the field are and which Institution they're at. Other than that, as others say - it's a question of costs, convenience, etc. and, I suppose what your career aims are at the end of the PhD. For me, being in London has been good in terms of attending events and such like - there's always something going on. It's also good because it's within easy reach of lots of other education faculties in other universities.

Hi there one and all,

As anitcipated, sound and useful feeback from the PhD oracles. I will take your input along in my deliberations. I notice that the majority have put in a good word for IOE but, must admit, I was going in for Birmingham because of the multicultural landscape (I'm a thorougbred multiculturalist/interculturalist both personally and academically). I am researching the creationist surge in multicultural/faith schools in the UK from an educational perspective and its challenge in regards to the teaching of evolution and will interrogate the appropriateness of Religious Education as a forum for addressing this controversy. Thanks again folks.