Oh, and for private accommodation, you might want to check Gumtree or http://www.brettward.co.uk/canb/

If you're willing to live in a flat/studio flat, expect it to be a minimum of 550/600£ a month. It can double, pretty much, depending on the areas.

For a room in a houseshare for a couple, count at least 400/450£ a month - although it is not quite worth it for a couple I guess.

Hey :)

Well done for choosing the lovely city I live and work in. You'll love it! The car indeed is not the best option in Cambridge, especially if you are to live or study in the centre (traffic-wise it is hell, and they are thinking of making car drivers pay to get into the centre at rush hours...). A bike with a VERY VERY good lock is the best, I agree.

Indeed, as a student you are normally not allowed to bring your car over, unless you get permission from the City Council. If you're sharing it, could you declare the car as your partner's? If not a student too, that would do it I reckon.

However I do find that the MA in English studies I got in the UK remains the most useful piece of paper I ever got! But this is perhaps mainly because I am foreign. First, the MA shows I have a good command of English, so I've never been asked to produce (expensive) IELTS or TOEFL results. Most importantly, I feel it was the best preparation for the PhD I want to apply for because it taught me a lot about English academic requirements and procedures, and also because I SO enjoyed writing that dissertation that it somehow confirmed I could go ahead and try and apply...

Same thing went on at University when I was an UG, to a lesser extent. I mean I don't feel like I made the most of it. The course was good though. I studied English (language+literature+history - UK and US). It was about 12-15 hours of teaching a week... quite a bit more than what you get in the UK! On top of that, halfway through my degree, I took a prep class for a year, which was extremely challenging.

All in all, I still feel very ignorant, but the one thing I got out of my education in France is that I never find anything very daunting, in particular because I've always had to deal with things I had not chosen (- be it at school or at University, I never had a choice of options, modules etc: you sign up for a whole course or you don't sign up at all).

Hi there. I am not doing a PhD... yet (-that'll come soon, hopefully), but I can totally relate to what you guys say anyway, especially you Xeno on our minds being selective.

Theories of people like Sartre, de Beauvoir or Foucault ( Olivia) are, among lots of Greeks and Germans, on the philosophy curriculum for French A-levels - compulsory for all. I actually had a really good teacher, so I blame it all on myself now as, almost ten years later, I need to know a minimum about them for my current job and remember virtually... nothing.

The same goes for languages: I took English, German, Latin and Spanish at school, but was only ever willing to practice my English. The result is I can't utter a word of German today (though I studied it for 7 years and got good grades!), can hardly ask for directions in Spanish, and I don't even want to talk about my Latin

Hello Helen.

For your project, unfortunately, I doubt anyone is going to answer your question just... like that. You have to read a lot, and try and identify things that have either not been dealt with much, or things on which people disagree etc. An empty space or a contentious point. If you find either, you shoud be able to figure out something easily.

Hope that helps a bit.

Ha ha, makes sense. Thanks, my curiosity is satisfied

Sorry, I misread, I thought you had to have them done the other way round. Still I'm quite surprised this is asked for between the UK and the US.

Sjo4, out of curiosity: were you asked to do this?

I've never had to for any UK course (I've been on a few), even for the MA. Yet my UG records are not even in English, but in French. Once or twice I asked if I had to get them translated or anything, and the answers were: "oh, don't bother, save your money, we'll figure out what this is worth!" and "no, don't worry, we're quite familiar with these"...

Did I get a "neighbours' favour" of some sort? That would surprise me, but hey... I would have imagined it to be even easier for US transcripts, given they're already in English.

Well, I take it the Open University must offer things online... You should check their website (www.open.ac.uk I think) and contact them.

Hi Alice,

Thanks for your answer. You've made me see the light, hehe.

Seriously, this is fantastic: the plan I have come up with will be really good to draw a timescale from if I think about time-management in terms of content first, rather than activity. I assume I was just over-complicating things...

Whoohoo. I'm on a roll. Time to write it all nicely and go to work in between, I should have a decent proposal by Sunday

Chapter outline done

Well, it's more like 3 vast areas to investigate. I guess each of them would be good enough for a long MA dissertation, so that probably starts to show that my project is fine length-wise (and hopefully implicitly that it can't be bad time-wise...). I'll try to improve it all but would not be too upset if I had to leave it like this for now, especially as there is a nice progression from part to part.

I am still totally at sea with the timescale... I've come up with cool things though, like how much time I plan to spend drinking coffee, or how much time I expect to waste thinking about how much more I wanted done at a given point etc. Yet for some reason I don't think I'll include these in the proposal, hem.

Any further help/advice still welcome...

Haha, I SO agree with Sleepyhead.

Wear them with something extra smart, feminine, fluid (not too tight, not too short). Like, looking best if you're not too curvy, a multicoloured silky dress, very loose. With a belt on the hips perhaps, and possibly a biker sort of leather jacket, but very feminine too, tight at the waist and all...

Hi Ruby :)

Many thanks for your answer. I don't know to what extent it helps, but it certainly is comforting ;)

Technically, they do ask for the chapter outline, and I reckon I'm going to have to work my way around this somehow...

For the timescale, I'm not so sure how to prove it is doable within three years, but then I am more than convinced it is, so I guess it's a good sign and I should be able to find a way to do this.

Hello,

I've just found out that the best university for me (in terms of supervision) is offering scholarships. I have two weeks left to apply but I'm struggling for the proposal. As required, I've defined my project + scope, the methods I wish to use, and made a bibliography (a selected one though: it does not fit within the page-limit).

But how on earth do you do a chapter outline and a timescale?

My topic falls into the field of English Studies. I have different themes, and different genre distinctions, but these are no chapters and I don't want to present them as such as that'd be... lame, to say the least.

As for the timescale, I've only managed to write: "obtaining and analyzing primary sources, obtaining and analyzing secondary sources, writing - all simultaneously if possible, as the first informs the second, the second the third, and so on". If possible, even more lame than my chapter outline.

Does anyone have any advice? Can I just say how unsure I am? Or how aware I am that this is going to change anyway? I won't be able to see a former lecturer for help before the deadline :(