Ask HN: Advice on academic funding
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).
In the UK courses are limited to the maximum price they can charge for 'home' 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.
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.
So, I am a little lost in the process and feel I might be missing something obvious.
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.
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!
Thanks