In all fairness to the poster, I know someone who got the full Marie Curie monthly salary in the UK i.e. around 3k a month. So, the poster has a point. Doing a PhD is hard work. It's rewarding work, but living off 1.5k a month is pretty tight. Most of us have to subsidize with outside work.

Hi there,
I'm in the running for both NERC and MIPTP BBSRC programmes and was wondering what people thought of the two?

Are there any clear advantages of one versus the other?

Any tips or shareable experiences from people currently on the schemes are also welcome.
Thank you.