Thank you so much for your response and your help!!! I won't despair and I will continue to look for fundings! ;-)

======= Date Modified 25 05 2010 00:05:03 =======
======= Date Modified 25 04 2010 00:04:45 =======
Hi all,
I'll tell you my story, hoping to receive good advice from you. I've graduated in December, and I have started to look for a PhD. I sent emails to 2 professors, I also had an interview and they both informally offered me their supervision. Then I discovered the bad side of all this: there was no funding available to finance my studies (humanities in medicine) and competitions for both internal and external funds were almost already closed. I just managed to try with a Wellcome application, I rushed and passed the first selection but I couldn't meet the deadline for the final step.
Now I don't know what to do. The point is that I can't really understand how it works and those who I spoke to didn't tell me much about the whole thing...It seems to me that you need to have a formal offer from the University in order to apply for internal grants...What would you advice? Would it be better to wait and apply to Universities when funding competitions are open? Thank you in advance