

Ask HN: Advice on academic funding - Timmons

Hi,<p>To give this some context I will start by saying that I was a GPU programmer in the games industry and wanting to get a more academic footing I applied and managed to get onto the MPhil Advanced Computer Science course at Cambridge University with the hopes of continuing onto a PhD (or a research role in an industry).<p>In the UK courses are limited to the maximum price they can charge for &#x27;home&#x27; students. So it was my plan to take a higher paying job outside of games to save the money to pay that. However, Cambridge has a policy of not wanting the students to work while they study, so the costs are higher as I will also need to provide more living costs than initially expected and my saving plan has accounted for.<p>I am very new to academia but it seems the standard way to solve this seems to be to approach the different funding organisations which offer limited amounts or through the Colleges. Unfortunately, for quite a lot of these I am not eligible, ironically, due to the income at my new job, age (I am 25 and a lot of them cut off at 24) and having been working for the years since leaving University in 2012. Others do not provide funding due to the course being an MPhil, not the standard MEng, MSci etc. as well as a few other things.<p>So, I am a little lost in the process and feel I might be missing something obvious.<p>The plan going forward, if I am actually on the right track, is to begin approaching businesses once I have confirmed my research subject. Based on my assigned supervisor and my research proposals the subject is looking likely to be in the area of developing GPGPU techniques for spacial recognition problems.<p>If anyone has any advice or guidance in this area I would love to hear it, especially if I have just went down the entirely wrong route in approaching this!<p>Thanks
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CyberFonic
My experience is from Australia. The system is probably different from the UK,
but there might also be some similarities.

I did a quick search and found that the UK also has a distributed version of
the AU Research Training Scheme. Have you contacted the postgraduate student
organisations, talked to your intended supervisor? You might have to defer for
a year to save up enough to fund your year of research. BTW, once you get
involved in your research work it is extremely hard to hold down a job as
well.

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Timmons
Thank you, I'll take a look for that scheme.

I have contacted the University organisations, my application was a little
late so I had missed a lot of funding opportunities that go early but applied
for anything that was available and spoke to my supervisor for departmental
funding. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot going this year on that level due to
changes in the system it seems.

The original plan has been to have enough saved to cover the very basic living
costs and then small bar/shop job for anything extra. There is no way I could
work my current job with full-time research on top, that for sure :)

