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The answer that I am writing down here is mostly applicable for all Ph.D. programs irrespective of the department/stream.USA: Please refer to my previous answer on Ph.D. in the USA[1]. I don’t want to repeat the same stuff in this answer to avoid duplication.In addition to all the details provided, most universities in the USA, have admission entries only for Fall. applications open around the fall of the previous year and end by Christmas of the next year. (e.g. if you want to gain entry into Fall 2021 entry in September, applications start around October 2020 and end by Jan 2021). No other multiple entries are allowed until there are some special reasons/considerations.UK: Admissions into the UK are relatively very tough for non-UK and non-EU students due to extensive networking requirements before admissions. You need to find a suitable professor/mentor to guide your Ph.D. work. Admissions go all the year round if the professor is ready to accept you. Most students receive scholarships and stipend but they are not as competitive as the USA. Some students don’t receive scholarships and fund their studies through education loans. Stipend in London ranges between £15K-£20k per annum. In other locations, it is less than £15k per annum. The stipend will be tax-free. All student visa holders can work up to 20 hrs of part-time work outside the college campus (the work can be technical work too. However, you cannot work full-time). You will complete your Ph.D. in 3–4 years unlike 5–6 years in the USA. this is one of the main reasons why the UK is preferred for Ph.D. graduates. They help you in expediting your work as fast as possible and help you finish the thesis work sooner than in the USA.Networking:It is done mostly by preparing a project proposal and sending the proposal to a professor via. e-mail and establishing contact to discuss ideas (Out of 70 professors, ideally 5–6 professors reply with a response; both positive/negative). By this, you shall also send your resume to him to see if there are any potential projects available with funding matching his and your interests. You can get their e-mail ID from university websites. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you might get admission into a pre-funded project too. Please look in through this website for open P.hD. opportunities in the UK, Europe, and Australia[2]. Once you get accepted by the professor, you will register with the university he is associated with and you will start working on your doctoral thesis. You have to be patient and it might even take 1–2 years in getting a professor matching your interest.More than all these details mentioned above, as a competitive Ph.D. applicant it is also important that you have good and rigorous coursework with excellent CGPA (preferably Distinction and above in masters) together with good proof of research works (either through recommendation or other means). More than those, good and impactful publications in high impacted journals will be of very high weightage. It would be great if you have got your postgraduate thesis work published in a reputed and high impacted journal. These requirements help you stand out in a crowd for a professor who receives monotonous admission mails all day.Best wishes!!!!Footnotes[1] Logeshwaran Ramalingam S's answer to What marks (GRE TOEFL and academics) are needed for a full scholarship for a PhD in pharmacology/pharmaceutics in the USA?[2] PhD Programmes, Research Projects & Studentships in the UK & Europe

I’ve been reading Quora for awhile and this is my first response. Granted it is just shy of an epic but, it’s necessary background.My mother as the noun applies - I cannot remove the fact that she gave birth to me and the dictionary description fits yet the verb does not describe our relationship from the nurturing supportive aspect. Which is in direct contrast to the close relationship she has with my brother. We have the same father so any animosity towards our father is shared.Through the years several times I would head into a therapist to get a little help getting myself on track. (Divorce, a month on a death penalty jury, miscarriage etc) I also didn’t feel it reasonable to put all my “trash” on those around me and the co-pay and safe space was worth it.I considered this from the time I was 25 and nearly 20 years later did I pull the plug. It worked for a decade plus hearing the therapist say that the black sheep was often the best adjusted. Living on the other side of the country helped. Distance did our relationship wonders. My grandparents were my gold standard relationship. They were who acted as my rock and support. I am an educated and employed professional who is very involved in the community. I give far more than I take from the world around me.I ended up moving back across country to “home” I stayed with my Grandparents to get on my feet again. When it was time to house shop after a series of house viewings immediately followed by a Grandparent in the hospital for a month I stopped looking after the 3rd time of this circle of sickness and getting them healthy and ended up spending a decade caring for them through their ends of life in their own home. You may ask why I tell you this - it’s the cornerstone to my final this is too much. During this time my mother would drive in from 8 hours away for 3 long weekends a year. She would set up on the living room sofa on the middle of everything and expect everyone to evolve around her in an 1100 sqft house. This included her 6pm bedtime and 4am wake to do dishes or other loud things. There was a hide a bed in a 3rd bedroom she could have used. There were tantrums when we would have large family events for those other than her to redirect attention. There was a call with my step dad after a spectacular blow up to ask him to help her get mental health help and despite us both being on cell phones and him saying he was alone they had patched her in so she heard the entire thing. Granted my message would have been the same, my delivery would have been tempered and I deserved honestly. I went in for a mental check up. The therapist openly asked what I get from the relationship. I told her 2 $50 checks a year. She asked if that was worth being on egg shells having the fact I educated myself and have a career be seen as a negative and a put down. Being told I need to sit closer to the axel in her van because of my weight (While a big girl I am well within what Honda engineers plan for) I laughed realizing my co-pay would only leave me $30 of what she sent me a year. While the emotions and guilt were heavy the undeniable math of the relationship I found humorous. However, I chose to maintain my role in the family for my grandparents.Years before when it came time for me to go to college my mother broke into tears at the concept of signing grant applications as she “wasn’t putting her house on the line” insinuating that I would default on my obligations. I was an honor scholar. My brother barely scraped through to graduate. Years later in fixed income retirement they took a line of credit out on their home. They bought a “rental” for my brother and his children. They told me if they sold it he would pay market minus real estate agent fees. I drove 8 hours to have lunch with my parents and make eye contact. I didn’t want them to buy me a house. I wanted to be valued in the same way that my brother was. It worked around to be that he had children, and they did it for the grandchildren not him. I knew I would have to sell a portion of my soul if they did help me in the same way and a small house in a rural town was not close to how highly I value my soul. It became a challenge as there is not a word that describes value in the English language that is not attached in some way to money. So they didn’t “get it” or chose not to.My Grandpa had colon cancer and it was a long process before he said he had enough. I took him to every non routine apppointment working from home. The bad radiation days. The appointments where we had to have the hard conversations. When he was home on hospice in his final days not eating or drinking this very strong man asked for sleeping pills to end it. I was not in the room, my mother was. In fact she had to open my closed bedroom door and I had to get off of a work call to go have the most challenging conversation of my life because she was not strong enough to. I knew I was not changing the end result. But our whole life he had instilled a code in us. My grandma was not physically able to do much for him but was crushed as what she could have physically done she could not in her heart. My mother disappeared to the kitchen. I have to explain that we won’t. He gave us the rules and it wasn’t fair to change them on us. He lived his life for 90 years in a certain way and the 3 pieces of paper that will last from his life birth, marriage and death certificates I wasn’t OK having it possibly say suicide and enabling that. We had anxiety medication. I called and called my mother in this 1100 sqft house to bring it. She never did. She hid in the kitchen 10’ away. Luckily my friend arrived to help. Once things are settled and Grandpa is napping my mother prances out and announces that she put Kleenex in the kitchen if anyone needs to break down. WTH. It was not the time to ask for a gold star. The entire family was around, social workers were around. Everyone had agreed on the approach. Even Grandpa, he wasn’t one to remain quiet if dissatisfied.For 2 years it was Grandma and I. She did not drive. I made her meals. My aunt would show up once a week to give her one of her baths and take her to an appt. As a professional adult who could well afford to live alone I had to ASK for coverage to leave overnight. It was a great ordeal for family to cover a weekend every month or every other month. At 40 years old to have my adult woman dating experiences I was asking for permission. My mother kept the same routine - she would show, direct how things should be done and then bail when the time came for the work.I found out I was pregnant with what would have been my first child hours before my Grandma passed. In ICU I asked my brother to leave the room but felt I could not ask my mother. So I told her I was pregnant. She looks at my partner who is standing next to me with a smile on his face and asks “Is it yours?” WTH? Then she proceeds to ask him his age etc. I was able to have Grandmas last co-herent conversation with her to tell her. She was so happy and the relief that my taking care of them had not taken my chance for my own family I watched her entire body shrink with relief. I would have never believed it if I didn’t see it. My brother who had not made time to see Grandma in the 2 years since Grandpa died had a meltdown about why I acted like I was in charge and knew everything with the nutritionist. Frankly because I was, I did all her meals, the refrigerator had a note pad where I tracked her calories I attempted to have a conversation with my mother about the family getting that I held most of the responsibility and it would be nice if folks could chill out as I stopped my life for so long to care for my grandparents. She simply said “You chose”. With a face worthy of playing Poker in Vegas. When we spoke about the final 2 months of Grandmas life where I mostly worked from home as she kept having pneumonia as she didn’t want to go to the rehab center my mother said “She would have been better off there”. What is incredible is that a home health agency if hired to do what I did would have been near 100k a year. But thank you was too expensive. Acknowledging my time was too great of an expense. My partner moved in to help me after Grandma died.About 6 months before Grandma passes my brother gets a loan to pay off the remainder of the home equity loan that had not been paid by his “rent” - my parents financed his house. He did not pay market minus agent fees.I told my aunt the executor who is not a strong person herself and a puppet that I was interested in buying the house my grandparents built, she told me from the time she started with the lawyer I would have 4–5 months to buy and move if I didn’t choose to buy it. Being pregnant that was tight to buy and move from where I had lived for a decade but I could live with it. At the point I am 10 weeks pregnant she meets with the lawyer and comes back and offers us a nearly 70 year old house at market minus agent fees AS-IS and if I didn’t buy I needed to be gone in 90 days as that was what Grandma asked her to do. She was glib and when I asked why she didn’t stick to her original estimate she quoted that Gma only asked for 3 months. I explained that what she and my mother were doing in no way reflected what I gave to the family. My Grandpa didn’t teach me to make highly emotional bad business decisions. Had Grandma known I was pregnant when they had that conversation months before it would have been different and she didn’t even stick to her original estimate. My aunt would leave and talk to my mother to negotiate and come back to be my mothers puppet. They held firm and it was a “meh” business deal and definitely not worth it emotionally. 4 days later I was no longer pregnant - insert greatvtrauma here. After hours in the emergency room we put an offer in on our house because I became overwhelmingly focused on protecting us and knew I could not do business with them. While I believe the stress they put me through was the cause of the miscarriage - I have settled on the firm fact that as a mother and an aunt they did not protect and care for me in the way they left me pretty much alone to care for their parents. Within a week we were to have an appointment. I had told neither the baby was gone, neither checked on my health. They both texted that morning wishing me well at the appointment and I simply replied there was no baby. All of a sudden there was a rush of artificial condolences and support. “What can we do?” It was too late. My aunt who was local left flowers. I had my husband throw them out before I looked at the card. 4 months after we moved the house was sold to a stranger after they did a bunch of work and the home that raised generations of us was sold to a stranger grossing them $3k more. The net was less than my offer given the work they did. Even though my efforts saved the family hundreds of thousands and even more my grandparents greatest fear of being warehoused in a home did not happen due to my efforts.We were to have Grandmas memorial 2 weeks after the miscarriage. My mother wanted to drop things at the house for storage. I knew she would start something- you know the saying about Leopards and spots? I get a panicked phone call from my aunt about all the missing things. Things that were mine. Things I would have to move if I stayed or went. Things that were where they belonged. She asked me to come show my mother where the stuff was. I said No and that frankly I blamed my miscarriage on how they treated me and I was just trying to get through Grandmas burial and memorial. She whispered goodbye. I texted my fiancé and he told her from then on to deal with him. I drive around for 6 hours like a homeless person until he got off work. When he got to the house there were 7 people there. SEVEN people moving pressboard furniture. My mother was screaming about where cheap 70 year old tools were, where things Grandma had given me that I moved cross country and back a decade before were. There were piles of garden shovels she was hauling away filling the driveway. My grandparents had money because they both worked and never spent money. She told my husband I wasn’t all of that as I did not fulfill my grandpa’s dying wish and give him the sleeping pills. That her asking if he was the father of the baby was because it was a “stressful time” not that it was entirely inappropriate. My step-dad (who raised me. Not new to the scene) this was the first he heard of the baby - never reached out in person at the burial or memorial or by phone. There’s much more but my anxiety rehashing it is high. It was hell. I was still having my blood tested from the miscarriage and her need to have everything focused on her pushed me to need to enforce landlord tenant laws from our state and say if she came on the property again I would have her no trespassed by the sheriff. Actually formally my fiancé did as both women behaved better dealing with a male figure. It was incredibly disappointing as I felt like we had become the stereotypical trash and were one step away from a call to visit Jerry Springer.We then communicated through a lawyer. One time we get a list that they want to pick up things of such vital importance as a pressboard desk that was on its way to the dump 18 years before when Grandma asked to use it, an office chair that I gave my Grandma used before I moved 15 years before and box fans. Walmart box fans. Insane things of no financial value and of seriously questionable emotional value. The best part. The date the requested they knew was my one big volunteer weekend of the year. It was an event that has been in the family for 60 years. I was livid at the father lack of respect for my time. At this point I respond to the lawyer to have them go through my fiancé as I didn’t have time for idiocy and included that I wanted to be left alone to start my life again and just asked for what they had been given while they left the heavy lifting of care taking to me. I had learned what was important from my grandparents, that I knew neither woman was capable of gratitude but the lessons were the same for all of us if we chose to learn them and no amount of stuff could get rid of the remorse for not being there when it was important when they were alive.There was a small wooden toolbox my Grandma said I could have that my mother was sure was hers. As much as she hoarded and hauled things away how was it left for decades in the basement? None the less, it was included on the list. I returned it with the keys to the house and a note that she had failed me. Her refusal to address her mental health wore those down around her to where they treated her as a damaged child and not the selfish and abusive adult she is. I forgave her as I was worth not having how I feel about her eat at my soul and she no longer had any control over me.In the 18 months since they have gone to the county to find the address of my new house to have the lawyer send mail there. The latter was postmarked the date I updated my address with USPS. USPS is not that efficient. They drive by and I live on a loop where there is no reason to be here unless you are going to one of 15 homes. They followed me through my Grandma’s Facebook. I felt dirty and violated and couldn’t figure out why so I Unfriended Grandma. Later when my cousin started a new account I saw Grandma as a friend on it. It was at that point I sent Facebook Grandma’s obituary for them to make it an in Memoriam account. I occasionally hear how their health is failing. I have no empathy. They broke that. My aunt brought my niece last year to where I volunteer. I had specifically asked my cousin that my aunt not bring my niece. I had to fight that battle with my cousin poopooing my boundaries and my explaining the her child was brought into the drama. My husband laid out clearly to my aunt to stay away from me. If she wanted the relationship back she needed to thank me for what I gave her parents, apologize for her part of the miscarriage and do what my grandma wanted done for the grandchildren which was to divide an investment account.This is the smallest thing yet is a solid data point unlike the more emotional apologizies and gratitude. Despite my mother and aunt each getting between 500–600k - Grandma wanted a small investment account to go to the 3 grandchildren for about $20k each but it was not written in the will. Much like a house in rural Idaho my souls value is greater. But I also know there is a dollar amount that is under $20k as to how much my mother and aunt value our relationship.All said - I married my husband on my Grandparents 70th anniversary in our new to us home that is everything we could have hoped for. Their anniversary will never go uncelebrated. My career took off when I was able to focus on it and not my grandparents. Ultimately the only part of the experience that was a surprise was the pregancy and my husband. Frankly, if it had not been for him I could have ended up institutionalized and medicated level crushed. I mourn not having the normal loving relationship of a healthy mother daughter bond. I am conflicted by the gratitude and envy of my friends that do. I’m grateful when I can “borrow” a parent. But, I know having my grandparents saved me and not everyone gets that. One of my greatest fears is that when our adoption comes through that I may have a daughter and I worry enough to not sleep about how to make sure she does not feel what I did. I would never want my own children around my mother and her behavior so even when they are not yet with us it is something that I have had to think of and would have needed to do for them. Even if not for me. I’ve known this for 20 years.I have no regrets. I know I could not have done it any sooner because of overlapping relationships with my grandparents. I also know that if the experience had not been so overwhelming and over the top I would still be cashing 2 $50 checks and spending more than that with a therapist. Being put down and on egg shells all the time and dealing with drama - when it’s good. Seriously when good makes you feel like crap. It’s kind of lonely being separate from my family as it “shouldn’t be this way” but ultimately I have to take care of myself. And I wouldn’t choose to be a part of such dysfunction- why should I remain due to shared DNA strands? Keeping mutual contacts ended up like playing whack a mole as they still had routes to me. So that has been uncomfortable at times adjusting the relationships that were more distant.I struggle with what to do when she dies. Do I attend and pretend and say nothing because it’s what I’m “supposed” to do and honor her or drive by after and look for fresh dirt at the cemetery? The holidays are a struggle as our table is smaller. But it is also a blessing as there is laughter and no tantrums from adults and is quite peaceful. It’s a new normal I’m working to embrace.