Hello.

I'm due to start a funded PhD in October and just wondering when they pay the stipend? It is monthly like a salary or quarterly like a student loan?

Also, I have been told I will have to travel to London fairly regularly - will I be able to claim this on expenses or is this expected to come from my stipend?

Finally, the 3rd year of the PhD will be in America - will I have to find the accommodation myself or will there be any assistance with this? Will I have to pay for my flights etc or will the uni pay for them?

Any guidance or previous experience will be much appreciated!

Thanks

======= Date Modified 07 May 2011 21:54:41 =======
Hi there! Where I am we get a cheque every three months for the stipend- I think you can arrange to have it paid atraight into your account but I haven't bothered. The rest depends a bit on where your funding is from. The PhD students in our department get some money each year to cover expenses such as travel costs, conference costs, equipment etc, but it isn't very much- only about £800 per year. But if your funding is from a research council and your costs have already been factored in then all of your travel and so on should already be covered. In my case when I ran out of travel expenses (quite early on because I had to travel quite far to see my participants and also have been to a few conferences) my supervisor had to pay any extra costs out of her funding.

I would contact your supervisor with these questions- I wouldn't imagine that you would be expected to cover these costs yourself as they will come to rather a lot! They may have already been covered by the funding source anyway. Not sure about how your accommodation will be arranged- will you be based at a university in America?

Best, KB

Hello. Congratulations on the offer - it sounds very exciting!

I think these things may vary quite a lot between universities - at mine, our stipends are paid monthly. Worth checking with the university. It's also a good idea to check with them about the other expenses you mention - at my university, there are people who are regularly expected to go to London for seminars and so on at a partner university, and their expenses are paid, but if I wanted to attend the same seminars I would have to pay for the travel myself as I'm on a different programme. At my university it seems to be that if it's expected that you do something then funding is provided for it, but if there's any element of choice about whether you do something then the funding being there is much more hit and miss. So it's definitely worth asking them - if there's an admin type person in the department who's been dealing with things then I'd ask them (email them a list of specific questions like the ones you have above) but if there isn't a specific admin type person, just ask the supervisor, they shouldn't mind.

Hello, thanks it is very exciting! I can't wait to start!

Thanks for the info, I guess it probably does very uni to uni and dept to dept. I shall either ask the supervisor or the admin people soon. I don't really mind either way, I'm just curious really.

The third year is at a uni in America yes so I'm not sure who funds that either, whether it's here or there, or whether I will be paid in pounds or dollars. I guess they might just point me in the right direction with accommodation but the rest will be up to me!


:-)