Advice on post-grad course selection

[Blodrast]

Heh, no, no. We're having a communication problem here
What I meant is that you'd email some _students_, not profs, students, from the respective departments. You'd email those students directly, not through department-wide mailing lists.

How would you get their email addresses then ? From the web. I'm preeeeeeetty sure that all grad students are required to have web pages - heck, even some undergrads are required to.
How do you get to them ? One of the easiest ways is to go to professors' web pages, and they usually have a list of their grad students. Pick one student from a prof, another student from another prof, etc. Since you send them all the same email, it's enough to write it just once, then copy/paste :).

But like I said, I can perfectly understand if you think it's too much trouble - I'd probably feel the same. However, this is a good method to find out the cost of living and to get a general idea about what it's gonna be like when moving into another town - and the _students_ are the right persons to ask, because you're gonna be in the exact (financial) situation as they are, so it's best to ask _them_ for an opinion, as opposed to asking a prof, or a guy with a job, etc.

Hope this helped a bit, anyway
Good luck in any case !

[L'Impresario]

Yes, I understood what you said, but I must admit that I didn't know that it was a common practice for MA students have their emails openly displayed - thought that this was reserved to research students or Phds. In my current uni at least we 're hard pressed to find even a prof email that's functioning
General living costs are outlined in the uni websites, but I just wanted some more personalized info and opinions.

Well, thanks once more, I guess I'll find my way around in the end
(once the weather gets a bit cooler tho)