FAQ DPhil funding

Disclaimer: this is an unofficial broad summary that is almost certainly unreliable or plain wrong in parts!
Note: From December 2010 I leave the employment of the University of Sussex, so basically you are asking the wrong person! But this advice below is left as possibly still relevant.
For an authoritative answer to your questions you should really ask the Sussex Postgrad Office.

UPDATE Jan 2010: for one deadlne made radically earlier, see bottom of page.

If you are accepted to study for a DPhil (PhD) at Sussex (or any other UK University) this does not automatically include funding; unless the place was one of  those relatively uncommon ones, e.g. associated with a specific research grant, that was clearly advertised as having funding attached to it.

Crudely, the costs of doing a full-time DPhil are: Tuition Fees ~£3000+£8000=£11,000 p.a., and Living Costs ~£13,000 p.a., depending on how expensively you live. 3 years and that adds up to ~£72,000!

Fees 2009-10
See http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/publications/pgrad2009/fees_table, one can hope that 2010-11 will be fairly similar, though political are other criteria might cause significant changes. Part-time fees are ~50% of the figures below.

Very approximately, the real fees are the Overseas ones, ~£12,750 p.a. for doctoral (or MSC) students in Informatics or Life Sciences. For Home students (UK/Eur Union, full-time) there are 2 parts:- one is the Home fee of ~£3390/£4650 that they have to pay (or find someone else to pay for them). The other part is a subsidy from the UK government for every Home student, which is very approximately the balance of the real fees, ~£8,000. Because this subsidy is hidden from the students (and calculated/dispensed to Universities in a really obscure and irrational way) many UK students are not aware that the full cost of tuition is indeed roughly the Overseas fee level.

Ways of funding the fees, and living costs ('maintenance')

If you are rich, or some overseas government is funding you, no problem.

If you are UK/EU residents (and it is residency not nationality  that counts: it is 'relevant connection' that matters, which typically means 3 years+ residency) then you already have most of the fees covered, it is just the Home Fee you have to find. Both EPSRC/BBSRC studentships and University-funded TAs (Teaching Assistantships) -- if you can get one -- pay this Home Fee plus a maintenance allowance of ~£12,600 (see http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/PostgraduateTraining/InformationForStudents/default.htm, TAs normally use the same rates).

If you are not UK/EU resident, then normally the EPSRC/BBSRC funding is not available for you. A University (Sussex or elsewhere) may offer you a TA-ship on the same terms as a UK student. But that still leaves a shortfall of the rest of the  tuition fees, the difference between Home and Overseas rates, i.e. around £8000. Either you pay that difference yourself, or find some different source of funding. There have been schemes -- previously called ORSAS but then replaced by the SIRS scheme (Sussex International Research Scholarships), that were designed exactly for this, but for any current version of these you should consult with the Postgraduate Office..

Applying for these funds

EPSRC/BBSRC studentships, and University TAs, are in practice allocated by the School (eg School of Science and Technology at Sussex) to which you are applying at the University. There are a limited number of these to allocate each year, never enough. So on the standard Postgraduate Application form there is a space mentioning funding, where you should state if you wish to be considered for any of these that come available. Typically [see update!] these are allocated around June or July -- so make sure your application is in well before that (i.e. by May), for an October start -- and very roughly the criteria will be based on the research standards of the applicants, somewhat modified by the need to maintain a balance between the different subject groups within the School. Exceptionally some studentships might be allocated earlier -- eg if you were offered a funded place at another University, you might use this as a bargaining position to get an early funding decision at Sussex, if Sussex was your first preference.

UPDATE - Jan 2010: For Research-Council funded studentships (but not TAs), there is a VERY EARLY deadline of Feb [15th updated to] 22nd, Monday 9am to Peter Cheng, for a supervisor to submit the core details of a student's application for research funding (to compete with other applications for a pool allocated to Sussex). This seems unrealistically early, and hopefully will be changed next year, but for 2010 this appears to be the deadline. The other TA-funded studentships look like having their timing as in previous years, as laid out above.

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