I am seriously considering doing a PhD, if I can get accepted that is. I live in Reading and there is not much opportunity to carry out a PhD in psychology/neuroscience/clinical language sciences at Reading University, also my research ideas may not get accepted there. Therefore I am thinking of travelling further afield to either UCL or Oxford University.
I think this depends upon several factors. These include how tired you get traveling and whether travelling time can be productive, such as on a train, or less so in a car. Your costs are important and also some institution may place some restrictions upon how far away you live. You do not say if you will be doing this full or part time. Part time is no problem if you are commuting. It also depends upon your obligations to the institution. Do you give lectures, tutorials, etc and at what time? Do you need to be in Uni every day in a lab for instance or can you work from home? Do you personally need high levels of supervisor and fellow student contact? In my experience, doing a PhD is a very solitary experience and the distances you are talking about commuting are of little consequence. I would suggest that the commute from Reading to Oxford is much less stressful than into UCL. I hope this helps.
I think this depends upon several factors. These include how tired you get traveling and whether travelling time can be productive, such as on a train, or less so in a car. Your costs are important and also some institution may place some restrictions upon how far away you live. You do not say if you will be doing this full or part time. Part time is no problem if you are commuting. It also depends upon your obligations to the institution. Do you give lectures, tutorials, etc and at what time? Do you need to be in Uni every day in a lab for instance or can you work from home? Do you personally need high levels of supervisor and fellow student contact? In my experience, doing a PhD is a very solitary experience and the distances you are talking about commuting are of little consequence. I would suggest that the commute from Reading to Oxford is much less stressful than into UCL. I hope this helps.
In theory, you can. I myself live about an hour out from my institute, a surmountable distance. You have to ask yourself the question whether you really want to, though. Traveling can be rather strenuous, and a PhD as a rule is a very intensive affair; much more so than a regular nine-to-five job.
In my case, this means that especially on experiment-days (and those are quite frequent), I often spend up to twelve hours in the lab, another two hours traveling back and fro, and then somehow have to find the time to eat, sleep, and do all the other usual chores that tend to crop up. As a rule, that does not leave a lot of spare time for "fun" activities. You tend to fall into a "eat-sleep-work-repeat" cycle.
Of course, it is not all bad: I deliberately chose to live in a beautiful and spacious cottage in the country-side, rather than a noisy, cramped apartment in the city. But if the main reason for commuting is that "I live here and don't want to move", you might want to reconsider. Academic careers as a rule tend to involve moving about a fair bit (at least in Europe, and judging by the amount of colleagues from the USA, over the pond as well), you may want to get used to that.
I agree with Matthijs, Traveling is almost an inevitability these days. I did my PhDs in the UK but now work in the US. I have an hour's train ride to work now. I think that it is important to consider the pollution you cause by driving.
Different Universities have different requirements. Generally, a "residency" of at least one year and sometimes more are required. However, residency is not about living in the same place but rather about being a full-time student (taking a certain number of courses or labs or doing a certain number of dissertation hours). So you need to find out what the requirements are for any programs that you might want to consider to determine if you can realistically meet them.
Thank you for your responses. They are really helpful as they bring to light considerations which I hadn't thought of, such as restrictions imposed by the institution, other obligations outside the immediate PhD and the eat-sleep-work cycle. I don't drive so trains would definitely be involved, as you say Paul it is better for the environment also it means that the travelling time can be productive time.
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