I’d be interested in others’ opinions on this (rather long and tedious) situation. I am a medic doing a PhD with full external funding from a research council fellowship. When I started my research in January, I thought that registering for a PhD would be just a formality. Fatal mistake… I sent off all the forms within the first week. However seven months on, the archaic bureaucracy at this supposedly prestigious institution has meant that I'm still not officially registered for a PhD! So far steps in this process include:

1) Graduate admissions office receives forms and sends them to wrong departmental graduate tutor
2) Correct tutor receives forms but does nothing with them for two months until chased (by me). Unfortunately he is part-time and based at a different site.
3) Aforementioned graduate tutor then say he will ‘email my primary supervisor to find out how to take this forward’
4) Discover that (very good) primary supervisor is not registered with university to act as a primary supervisor: he was ineligible until he handed in his own MD and then filled in a form. He was in the process of doing it. This takes around one month
5) Six weeks later, I chase up the graduate tutor again. This time he informs me that it might be a problem to have a second supervisor at a different institution (despite lots of other PhD students being in this position and the fact that he had known about this since day 1)
6) Spend several hours calling around various university admin offices to discover the procedure for dealing with this, which I relay to graduate tutor
7) Graduate tutor then emails various managers and, after some wrangling over a fee transfer to institution number two (apparently usual procedure but which he didn’t want to follow) we finally agree to register 2nd supervisor as an external supervisor at this university without a fee transfer
8) Takes several weeks to register 2nd supervisor
9) Graduate tutor then emails to say he has just found out that second supervisor needs an honorary contract and to attend a 90 minute PhD supervisor training course (despite being an experienced professor and having attended several supervisory courses at his own institution)
10) Six months in, graduate tutor suggests putting down a nominal second supervisor to allow me to register (then swap around supervisors later). Usually it is only possible to backdate a registration by 3 months
11) Person dealing with forms at admissions office has been on holiday/ on maternity leave/ dead for a few weeks. Just back today and sends me an email asking for reasons for the delay...

What would others do now (also bearing in mind research is not going terribly well)? I am torn between:

a) Deep breath, polite email from me and supervisor explaining situation
b) Withdraw application and register at 2nd supervisor's institution
c) Official complaint
d) Forget PhD, quit medicine and research and go on holiday

Any thoughts?

======= Date Modified 12 Aug 2009 11:18:49 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
Right, ok, first with the breathing...

Next up - yes there was a small c**k up at the beginning where the admissions office sent the paperwork to the wrong person, but apart from the the problem seems to be with the graduate tutor. I presume that this is the member of academic staff who deals with all postgrad apps in your dept (ie not a university-wide thing). If so, trust me on what I am about to say: this person will have been given the role because nobody else wanted it. They probably don't want to do it but by contract they have to perform some admin, and it was their turn to do this. They have probably never done it before: they have no idea what they are doing. They don't mean to annoy you - they just don't have a clue.

The options left to you (sensibly) are:
1) call the admissions office and calmly explain the situation to the admin person - making her aware of the issues with the grad tutor (but not as a formal complaint) and perhaps suggest that the head of dept expedite the process
2) start with a different supervisor and then swap - but again, I would suggest some form of 'guarantee' for this - ask if the head of dept/school could promise that this will happen asap