I emailed ESRC trying to see if my institution was sent last Friday or shall be sent today and this is the response I received:

Dear Allan

Unfortunately all letters have been taken to the mail room for today’s posting so unfortunately, I cannot confirm when individual institutions were posted.

Kind regards
Julie
ESRC PTD Enquiries

It seems that we shall all hear tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. I have been receiving emails from my potential supervisor saying that our Nom Con was sent an email late last week saying that results shall be released this week or early next week. It seems that luckily, it shall be within the next couple of days from the responses we have received. Good luck everyone!

I was thinking the exact same thing...

I've just heard from my Nom Con that RHUL haven't heard yet and should be within next few days (as we know)...

Oh great...My Nom Con doesn't work on Tuesdays so will then be Wednesday for me. Fingers crossed we are in the letters sent Friday bunch!

======= Date Modified 06 Aug 2010 16:34:50 =======

Thanks for this! So Monday it is then.



Ah OK. We can all still hope! I cannot wait for Monday now ;-)

Nothing has changed on mine since April. It's still in stage 3 - with council. I don't think we can read much from that though...

Haha, how true! I think keeping busy over the weekend should work OK for Monday to hurry up!

======= Date Modified 06 Aug 2010 11:29:06 =======

That sounds great! Fingers crossed for you and for everyone on here. I think going out sounds like a good idea! I may need to adopt a similar coping strategy ;-)



It is starting to look that way...

I am glad I'm not the only one! I think we deserve to know now. Where did you apply and for what subject?

No news from Nom Con yet; however my potential supervisor emailed me at 10am saying that RHUL haven't heard yet and she predicts it shall be next week now. I'm still hoping for some news today though! Has anyone else heard anything yet?

I had a slightly unconventional way of getting to an ESRC application. I was approached by a lecturer at RHUL and one at KCL to apply for an ESRC/MRC studentship first and then we also decided to apply for an ESRC one. My advice would be to make sure that you are very specific in what you want to look at and view staff profiles at the Universities you're interested in early on. We started the proposal in January for the mid-April submission. I would also encourage you to choose your references carefully as I have heard they carry weight in the decision making process to a moderate extent.

I received a good amount of support in writing the proposal to ESRC 'level' which I felt was crucial. In addition, a good working relationship with your potential supervisor is very important as you may be working with them for the next 3 or so years. By this, I always look for regular email contact and the general feel you have about how much they wish to help you.

I may have rambled on a little; however I hope some of this helps!

Thank you for your reply SocDave! Interesting that you got a more specific response; however a good one nonetheless. I will be checking my emails all day on Friday now then.

In regards to funding, ESRC is my last optionwe for this year. My potential supervisors and I also applied for ESRC/MRC Interdisciplinary Studentship; however we heard at the end of May that we were unsuccessful with that one.

Yeah, that is fair enough! I understand what you mean and that's a reason why I booked my hols in September. I cannot wait for this wait to be over now...

Mixilgt - Yes, true. In a way, it's nice not to feel that I have to check my emails so many times a day now...until Monday.

SocDave - Sorry to hear that. It's bad timing on their part...maybe you can check emails at an Internet Cafe or something?

I also emailed the ESRC a few days ago and have just received their response:

Dear Allan

The decision letters are due to go out at the end of this week and are sent to our nominated contacts at the universities. It is they that forward the decisions to the students.
Regards

PTD Enquiries

So looks like early next week people :)