Hi everyone,

I am a new PhD student with a Dorothy Hogkin Scholarship in University of Manchester. I have a question here.

The total amount of my scholarship is 90,000 pounds for all three years. Excluding my tuition fee and basic stipend, it seems I can only get 5000 pounds for my experimental item ordering and office consumables. I would like to know if this amount is enough for a PhD student for staying in the university for three years. If not, can I have other ways to working the consumable fee out.

Cheers

This has made my day slightly worse.

I am a part-time student, self funded with no budget for comsumables, fieldwork etc. I think you will find that a lot of us ldthink that £5000 is a huge amount but I guess it depends on what your experiments are. I have already spent hundreds of punds of my own money on equipment, books etc plus a couple of thousand travelling to fiedlwork locations (and I have only done pilot study) and a conference.

I guess some of the cost of the scholarship is for the use of the lab and other facilites (desk space etc)?

My studentship had some money left over after fee's and stipend that was meant to be for consumable's (no where near as much as yours though!) and I never saw a penny directly. It might depend on the scholarship/studentship in question but I think it's as Jepsonclough says. It covers the departments costs of housing you really, the stationary, room, equipment supplied to you. I don't think it really counts as a fund you can dip into to buy specific pieces of equipment unless they've already been earmarked before starting.

If I'm wrong though, and it is one you can use then yes it should be enough. I think regardless of area 5k is a lot to have to spend on equipment at PhD level as most of what you need should already be in place.

I had £750 a year as an ESRC student to spend on stuff I needed e.g. conferences, equipment. I think there is a LOT of money that goes towards uni stuff - that you'll never see though.

I also had to claim the money for equipment, i.e. purchase stuff through the finance team - the money wasn't sent to my bank account.

Sorry for not claiming that clearly. Actually I am an international so I need to pay full rate of tuition fee which is around 14,200.

Yes. Thanks. I understand the situation. But I have checked my funding amount with the account sector. They told me that the total amount of the scholarship is only 90,000 (and they dont know if there will be other forthcoming funding through the scholarship). Cause I am a student in engineering course, my expenses on lab consumables will be extremely high. Normally, my group colleges get around 3000 a year for supporting their experiments, office items and conferences (I get only 5000 for the whole duration). Therefore, I am a bit worried about I should pay a future conference with my own money.