Offered a phd but only 3k bursary - stressed!

J

Hi all,
Please can you advise?
I've been offered the above but I can't live on this amount - even though I'm grateful to be recognised.
I'm panicking that unless I can obtain further funding then I won't be able to continue with my Phd studies in Linguistics.
Has anyone got any advice as to the best places to source etc funding as I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed and stressed at the mo. Thanks in advance.

P

Quote From Jojoarmo:
Hi all,
Please can you advise?
I've been offered the above but I can't live on this amount - even though I'm grateful to be recognised.
I'm panicking that unless I can obtain further funding then I won't be able to continue with my Phd studies in Linguistics.
Has anyone got any advice as to the best places to source etc funding as I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed and stressed at the mo. Thanks in advance.

Firstly, are you a home, EU, or international student? Have you already started your PhD, or are you still at the application stage? Where are you studying, in the UK or elsewhere?

J

Hi, apologies. I'm a home student. I start my phd in Jan 2021. At Huddersfield uni as that's my home town. Ive been offered a fee free course and a 3k maintainance grant. Thanks,

P

Quote From Jojoarmo:
Hi, apologies. I'm a home student. I start my phd in Jan 2021. At Huddersfield uni as that's my home town. Ive been offered a fee free course and a 3k maintainance grant. Thanks,

Will you be living at home or will you need to rent somewhere? If I were you, I would keep searching for relevant grants, but also think about getting the doctoral loan. If you want to delay your start date, maybe you could apply for research council funding (i.e. AHRC) for September 2021?

J

Hi, Thanks for this. I'm 44 with kids etc so a mature student lol with own home etc. I think I'll have to accept their offer and apply for loads of grants etc which is going to be a lot of extra work as I'm finishing my MA dissertation at the mo. I may postpone my start date them as you suggest. Thanks for your time. Ps. The loan is not given if you get other financial awards so I can't combine unfortunately.

E

Hi. Congratulations first for being accepted. The PhD system is unfair. They should really consider this. Do you have a job now that you can continue working as part time? 20 hours or so? If you get an extra 800 quids each month, you could survive.
Normally I would recommend to reject the offer. But getting exempted from fees is not bad.
Another approach is to continue working full time or 3/4 time, and apply for part time PhD and pay the fees. For home students, it should not be that bad.

J

Hi Thanks for your reply - much appreciated. I am an English teacher so I do part-time tutoring (don't work at a school anymore thankfully) but the hours are not guaranteed - plus I have to spend time planning for each student.
If anyone could advise me on where to get some decent charity grants for dialectal research then that would help. Thanks again. I have a lot of thinking to do.

B

You might find this helpful: https://fundsonline.org.uk/ But the problem is that the sums of money are often small and one-off. I really doubt (particularly given the recession to come) that you could pull enough together and it would be a near constant task.
Is the choice of Huddersfield to work with a particular expert? Huddersfield isn't covered by AHRC PhD funding as far as I can tell, but Leeds, York and Sheffield are in the White Rose partnership. Their next deadline would be January 2021 but that would give you time to identify suitable supervisors and work on a proposal. It might be an option if you have a strong academic background or if the research might interest a collaborative sponsor.

J

Hi, thanks for your advice.
My proposal is looking at language variation across Hx and Hudds as I live in Huddersfield. I did contemplate Sheffield but I expect they would want me to gather data from their local areas.
I have kids and one with SEN so I need to be as near as I can get to home really.
Thanks for the link. I may postpone my studies until I can find the time to do some intense research around funding. Thanks again to you all.

P

Quote From Jojoarmo:
Hi, Thanks for this. I'm 44 with kids etc so a mature student lol with own home etc. I think I'll have to accept their offer and apply for loads of grants etc which is going to be a lot of extra work as I'm finishing my MA dissertation at the mo. I may postpone my start date them as you suggest. Thanks for your time. Ps. The loan is not given if you get other financial awards so I can't combine unfortunately.

Maybe double check with Student Finance - I know if you have RC funding you can't get the loan as well, but if it's just a grant you might be able to get it. The fee waiver might be a spanner in the works though. Is the grant from your university or another source?

J

Hi, it's through uni. It's a fee waiver and 3k maintenance grant. Yes I will speak to SF also. I will apply to the N Lottery in Oct also once they open applications again. Thanks again.

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