Irish Research Council 2014/2015

Jaimz30

mikehayes83 wrote: »

Thanks Jaimz30 I will contact them in the morning and hound them in case it's after getting lost in someone's inbox!!

Hound away Mike - sometimes that's the only way you'll get things done! Don't sit back and wait for people to come to you in academia - you'll find you'll be waiting!

Has anyone in TCD received endorsement from the Research Office yet? No email for me yet, I've contacted them to inquire about it but haven't heard back yet...

mikehayes83

Jaimz30 wrote: »

Hound away Mike - sometimes that's the only way you'll get things done! Don't sit back and wait for people to come to you in academia - you'll find you'll be waiting!

My Hounding was successful got my endorsement this morning. Just wait till June now!!

LegofLamb

Jaimz30 wrote: »

Fair play to you LegofLamb. As you said - whatever happens happens now, it's out of your control. It takes me days to come down off the stress buzz when I do these things (essays, thesis, applications) - does anyone else feel that way too?

It's a strange time for me - although I'm finished things I don't necessarily feel 'finished' and there's no relief or joy in being done. Then I spend days re-reading things (which I know is bad in case I find a typo or stress that I should have worded something differently).

It's the same when I receive results (which are usually good), lets face it, we wouldn't be applying for these things if they were average. But again it takes days for the joy to resonate with me - my family and friends tend to go bananas and I'd be like 'meehh, whatever'.

Best of luck to you LegofLamb - the best thing I find to unwind after these things is a double-header at the flicks or an easy read. I went to American Hustle and Wolf of Wall St. one after another lately - great shows!!

Thanks Jaimz for the goodwill. I didn't realise how stressed and tired I have been until it hit me this morning in work.

After application I'm not a stresser. I don't re-read applications to be honest - I'm not into that type of torture lol.

Football Manager on the PC is a good de-stresser for me. Playing guitar too. I'm completely obsessed with Queens Of The Stone Age (hence forum name). Love playing along with their tunes. ...Like Clockwork was my album of 2013.

I hope everything goes well for you too. I really think I covered every point in the application, the help pack the host RO provided, and the advice of all the various people that had a look. I'm happy that its as strong as it can be so it all comes down to the subjective element of the assessment. Fair play to all those who have applied. **** just got real.

andweneverdid

For any UCD students, I contacted our RO today. They assured me that they will be endorsing applications this evening and tomorrow morning (the deadline is 4pm tomorrow) and will send out an email re same tomorrow to those whose applications have been endorsed.

Phew, endorsement just went through. Going to attempt to forget all about this now, see you all back here in June :P

Spotfire

Nothing left for us apart from the long wait......

And of course a decision on our future!!!

Leighn

Sounds like we all feel the same. Good to have boards.ie for reassurance!

Anyone applying for funding from other sources?

Jaimz30

Leighn wrote: »

Sounds like we all feel the same. Good to have boards.ie for reassurance!

Anyone applying for funding from other sources?

We're all in the same boat - it is kinda reassuring to have people just as nervous as I am to discuss this with. The family and friends either don't understand/care how big this is! (The former I reckon)

Ya I'll be applying for other sources of funding, obviously those which fall under the remit of my research. Luckily, I have a great rapport with my supervisor as she oversaw my MA also and we conversed most days. She already knows the avenues to explore regarding funding opportunities. Also, most colleges fund a few PhDs annually so I'll be applying for that too. It was that route which covered my MA. I think it's safe to assume I'll be using the IRC application as a template for further funding applications - it'll be a matter of moulding/reconfiguring the sections to adapt to the other required funding stipulations.

What harm can it do? I'll be exhausting as many possible sources of funding as I can as long as it doesn't interfere too much with my research.

Bablatrice

Please see my earlier post. I am interested to see if others have had any similar issues with IRC??


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=88980567#post88980567

Jaimz30

Fortunately I didn't Bablatrice - I luckily had given myself the luxury of time to copy, paste, edit, and save my application days before the deadline. And then of course when I was fine polishing and re-editing my application I was doing this on the official application. Thankfully, I read and reread the PDF version many many times before sending it off (and subsequently since) and found no errors that I can find anyway.

An issue I did have though that caused me some panic was when I was copying a section from my saved Word Doc. to their allocated section, I was exceeding word counts and couldn't understand why!! I contacted my college RO and they could not give me a definitive answer. I found out myself that bullet points counted as words and when I was filling out my 'research schedule' this included 26 bulet points (when I was a word off the limit). Therefore, I was now 25 words over the limit!! This was an awful headache and really should have been highlighted by the IRC beforehand especially when they advocate the use of bullet points in certain sections. Should one really be allocated as a word when the word counts were so small??

Anyway I think they mentioned this in their guide due to me nearly having a mental breakdown haha!!

I guess that was the experience I had of two servers relaying different information (in this case word count figures). I'm sorry to hear of your predicament - but it is unlikely they will budge at this stage when they've already covered their asses regarding which servers to use.

Unless the errors in the application are very bad I would say it's probably best to leave it and hope for the best rather than getting into a fight over it. I found an error in mine too after submitting it, these things happen and I'm sure they get very few applications that are 100% perfect anyway; we're all human after all!

Spotfire

Did anybody supply additional information on their form via the "upload PDF option"?

Ravelleman

Spotfire wrote: »

Did anybody supply additional information on their form via the "upload PDF option"?

It's just for a bibliography, if you want to include one, I believe.

nialljf

Some people were asking for PhD funding opportunities elsewhere. There's a good database at jobs.ac.uk. It's for UK universities. A lot of them offer just the fee waiver to EU applicants, but it'd be better than nothing.

LegofLamb

Do we receive any notification about Research Office Endorsement?

Yes, I got an email from the IRC to say they received my endorsement from the RO.

LegofLamb

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, I got an email from the IRC to say they received my endorsement from the RO.

Yep, just received the email there myself from the IRC.

Paddy365

Any idea if 'conditional offers' will be made this year? Was hoping I would know something in April!

Ravelleman

Paddy365 wrote: »

Any idea if 'conditional offers' will be made this year? Was hoping I would know something in April!

What do you mean? Conditional offers are those made to the people who have been selected by the panel of experts in the first instance, in the expectation that the relevant documentation then be supplied by the candidate and their university.

Spotfire

Yes - I thought that conditional offers were made to successful applicants > it is conditional pending the IRC getting your academic transcripts to prove that you are who you say you are.

Ravelleman are you applying for funding again? I thought you were successful last year?

Ravelleman

Spotfire wrote: »

Ravelleman are you applying for funding again? I thought you were successful last year?

No. And yes, I was.

Leighn

Paddy365 wrote: »

Any idea if 'conditional offers' will be made this year? Was hoping I would know something in April!

Is it April? :eek:

bren2001

Leighn wrote: »

Is it April? :eek:

You won't find anything out until July (ish).

httpete

Anyone have any information on cancelling an IRCSET application?

I have another opportunity for a postgraduate programme that I think I might prefer to what I have applied for with the IRCSET.

Also, as I think I read about this somewhere, does anyone know if there is a limit on the number of IRCSET applications you can make?..and if so, would cancelling an application count against this limit?

Spotfire

That is something you would need to contact the IRC about.... they might be awkward about something like that.

Having that said, if you have another opportunity then why not apply for both??

You have no guarantee that you will get either, so why not keep your options open........

aidoh

bren2001 wrote: »

You won't find anything out until July (ish).

Ah no, really?
I heard it was the end of May / start of June and thought that was long enough.

Ravelleman

aidoh wrote: »

Ah no, really?
I heard it was the end of May / start of June and thought that was long enough.

Yep, it'll be July.

mikehayes83

Is not everything running earlier this year such as the call closed a lot earlier than last year. So it may be May/June when people find out, surely as I think making a decision earlier was the goal of the earlier deadline dates

bren2001

mikehayes83 wrote: »

Is not everything running earlier this year such as the call closed a lot earlier than last year. So it may be May/June when people find out, surely as I think making a decision earlier was the goal of the earlier deadline dates

The applications were a month earlier this year. Last year, the released the results in the 3rd week of July. It is such a badly run system, just because they get the stuff a month earlier does not mean it will be a month faster. I would still expect a result at the very end of June/ start of July.