I am aplying to UK institutions being an EU student, all of the projects I have applied for were for home/eu/overseas students, none of them was strictly for non UK students.

I am quite unsucesfull with my applications, hence I decided to start asking about the feedback (as H and others sugessted).
The thing is I am getting no feedback. People who used to email several times to say/ask/inform me on the stage of my application don't reply to my question about the reasons of rejecting my application.
The only feedback I got from the interview was: everything was fine, keep applying, no need to improve anything.

What would you think?

Sometimes you just need to accept that your application may be fine but who ever they chose to interview are just better than you. This may based on grades of work experience. Keep applying and eventually you will get one. Just ensure you include all relevant research experience, and try and tailor this to why this would be useful to a specific project you are applying for.

PhD's are quite competitive, so you are probably just being pipped to the post by a very good applicant. I'm sure that some projects get so many applicants that its almost a draw out of the hat as there are so many good applicants.

Just keep trying, I'm sure you will get there

Thanks for the replies. And for cheering me up:)

I realise there are people who may have more experience and be more suitable, I just don't get why it is so hard for them to write: we have chosen someone who has more experience, try to do something about it, or we preferred the other candidate because he/she wrote more passionate statement, we perfer somene who has qualification from British university, you could try to do an MRes here....Whatever, anything... I just get the feeling there is no particular reason for rejection and that's why they just ignore me.

I know they are busy and all but, please, most of those people emailed me regularly before I sent that feedback question.

I honestly understand how u feel, because I got my first rejection news today.. and it is quite disheartning... it has ruined my day.. but i guess it is all a part of the life...
but with my application, they have told me that my application was rejected because I dint have enough research experience.. it is a bit ironical because the whole reason for me to apply for a phd is to do research...

Sry.. i think I am getting a bit too much involved and should be back in life within hours...

It can be really annoying and demotivating, I had one day where I had 1 supervisor tell me that I wasn't suitable and 2 other supervisors tell me that they had appointed more qualified people for the post after they had been enthusiastic and keen to see me. I was gutted after that and was considering abandoning the search for a PhD and doing some lab work to gain more experience. But I carried on and after god knows how months writing out god knows how many application forms I have been lucky enough to get a studentship sorted.

Getting to the interview stage shows that you are on the right track so just keep on plugging away and the right project will come up for you.

How about you find out that one of your referees ingored reference request for your dream programme?

No wonder they were not replying thinking my referee doesn't want to send my reference.

In fact she didn't notice the request among other papers.
I don't like to blame anyone for my failure, but it really feels like that was the reason.

Do you think there is anything that can be done to fix it now, after the deadline and interviews?

Mellory you asked 'I just don't get why it is so hard for them to write'. Simple answer....they're lazy.

Yes, and also because they tend to be deluged with applications so they won't reply to everyone. If you can't get any joy with feedback from them, find somebody in your existing university who you trust (probably one of your referees) who is involved in PhD recruitment and ask them to appraise your application. I got my referees to appraise mine before I sent them. Just a thought...

I got that feedback.

My statement wasn't as convincing as the statemets of other students.
Additionaly NO ONE of my referees forwarded my references on time.
Hence they had to judge my application on the basis of my statement only.

I just thought I'd sum up this topic.

'NO ONE of my referees forwarded my references on time'. And they want MORE money.

that's shocking! Have you told them that the reason you didn't get offers/ interviews was because of them?!

This all makes me feel quite lucky, my referees are diamonds!

My referees prepared my references in September.
One of them, my thesis supervisor is extremly busy, I understand that. Except this one situation he always finds a minute to send out my references and cheers me up that I will get something eventually.

The other supervisor from my undergraduate times asked me to prepare those references. Whenever she gets the reference request, her secretary calls her (she's on the leave), then she calls me, then I go to the secretary, ask her to print out the references, chase my supervisor to sign it, and send it away myself. I knew no one asked for my references because I didn't get a call from that supervisor. And then I get it, past the deadline, because the request got lost among other papers she received from the office.

My third supervisor is same as the first one, extremly busy and does me a great favour agreeing to be my referee as he knows me least.

I chase them, I remind them, I just can't do anything about it if I don't know someone asked for references.

I am upset because I know from my UG supervisor that recently not many reference requests arrive at all. This was my dream program, I tried to keep in touch, read around, I just didn't talk about it much in case that would be tempting fate. And here I am, defending my thesis in 2 weeks, and having no options for now. I really am trying to be optimistic. It's just hard to do every day.