Hi everybody, sorry to write such a long message. I'm considering a PhD in the UK and although I have visited university webpages and have some idea about funding and language requirements, I have still lots of practical questions:
-Is it possible to get admitted in a research program without knowing anybody in the UK? Would it be adequate to browse the faculties' webpages and e-mail spontaneously potential candidates?
-My academic history has been a bit odd. I completed a 1st-honours BA (Classics) 3 years ago. At that time I felt disappointed about university and decided to try the industry instead and live abroad. I did internships and some professional training as a journalist, now I work as a linguistic mediator. Parallelly I started my second BA (Musicology), which I will complete next June. I hope to get a 2:1 or 2:2. My areas of interest for a PhD are interdisciplinary, involving history of music, literature and rhetoric. Could a music faculty accept me with a 2:1 or should I apply to a Classics/Literature faculty instead?
-With 2 BAs, could I register directly for a PhD or should I go for a MPhil first?
Many thanks for your time,
Eva

I am not in your fields but I will have a go at answering the general questions.

- It is easier if you know a guy you want to work with but obviously this is not the case most of the time. So email them and see. However do some research about their research and don't cut & paste emails. Take effort in writing the email and show genuine interest like read a paper or two by the potential supervisor.

- Every PhD student is initially registered as a MPhil. It is rarely a qualification aim on it's own. Go for the PhD. IF you are not good enough, they will ask you to do MPhil but this happens about a year and half into the PhD.

Thank you for your replies.

So the distinction between MPhil and PhD is mere bureaucracy as far as I have understood. Registering for a MPhil is only worth if you want to study a PhD later or if you can't complete a PhD, while a MA/MSc has a value by itself even if you don't want to do research later.

Sorry if my questions seem a bit basic but the system I studied in is quite different.

how do you actually research this area??? sounds like some PhD into something useless, almost as useless in undergraduate degrees into 'surf science' (plymouth uni, i think) and the 'golf course management' degree offered by some other uni.

:) Political correctness obviously not a strongpoint.

i didn't say they weren't intellectual subjects, I just can't understand how you can research the area.

Stu,

Of course you can. Many of the main areas are already exhausted (I think it would not be a good idea to write a PhD on Mozart or on Horatius), but there are still minor authors / composers which are worth researching (however it is true, as someone pointed, that there are more composers left in music than in the Classics field), fore example. Some subdisciplines within these two fields have always appeared very recently and offer plenty of things to do - for example, Indoeuropean Linguistics within Classics, or social history or local studies within music. Classics and music are also live subjects and it is also possible to research, for instance, the reception of a particular Greek author in XXth centuy literature or the works of a contemporary composer. Or you can take a well-known subject and try to see from a interdisciplinary or comparative point of view...

btw, thank you again for your answers. I guess the best thing will be to contact the university departments directly, but I just did not want to apply with a completely unadequate background and seem ridiculous.

I think this comment a couple of posts back "every major radical thought has already been exhausted in the area, all you can merely do is slightly modify it" is true to most areas at the moment... not just classics