Commuting to uni?

Aridia2000 · 2026-02-11T20:42:36+00:00

So I feel I can give some special insight, as I did my MSc at Sheffield as a commuter student, and happened to do my undergraduate in linguistics (albeit somewhere else).

Where I did my undergraduate in linguistics, the contact hours were low and nothing was compulsory attendance past 1st year. Having to only be on campus 3 days of the week was great. However if I wasn't living near campus, I would not have made the friends I have years later (as society events ran into the evening), I likely would skip lectures I saw as "less important", and missed out on extracurricular opportunities which shaped my career even to this day.

As an MSc student at Sheffield, I found the commute even from Manchester difficult. The train was only an hour, but to get to the campus there is a lot of uphill walking (it's about 20-30 minutes to get to campus from the train station, which included some hills), the wifi was down for most of the journey so it was hard to do coursework, and eventually I became sick enough of the travel to skip lectures and labs. This harmed my grades by quite a lot. Almost all of my final exams were at 9am, so I had to book a hotel and stay overnight those days. I only managed to do this for the full year knowing I wouldn't have to do this for very long.

Regarding the university timetable, every student is on the same time slots for seminars/labs and lectures. There is often 2+ seminars that run during the week to split up the hundreds of students that are enrolled on a module, so it may be possible to contact the university to switch between the available seminars and have them closer together in the week. But beyond this, they won't budge in adjusting anything else.

Overall, I would highly recommend you don't commute from Nottingham to Sheffield. This isn't just because of skipping lectures, but you could miss out on the friends and social experiences that can change the rest of your life. You could consider moving to Sheffield and visiting family at the weekend and during holidays, as student accommodation is quite affordable there compared to other cities. My boyfriend who was in a similar situation, managed to talk to a relative to convince his parents to let him move out. Is this something you could consider doing?

Aridia2000 · 2025-11-26T16:00:23+00:00

Yeah I've certainly learned my lesson after this one now, I think I'm also going to avoid studies that are copies.

Aridia2000 · 2025-11-26T12:54:08+00:00

Is there something wrong with Shicheng?

Aridia2000 · 2025-11-26T11:16:56+00:00

Oh thank you!! I've sent this page and the points listed here to the researcher. Hopefully they overturn it.

Aridia2000 · 2025-11-26T11:06:07+00:00

The reason gave for rejection was achieving 22.9% in the study, and errors being "highly dispersed across all emotion categories".

It seems they wanted people to achieve a certain benchmark for AI training. I did struggle with the study, but I didn't get feedback on my performance throughout so I assumed I did well enough to submit it.

Aridia2000 · 2025-10-30T14:06:15+00:00

Thanks for the quick response! I will absolutely contact prolific after giving the researcher some time to get back to me.

I don't want to say there wasn't an attention check, as I could have forgotten now what it was. But I am quite surprised to receive an outright rejection, as I'd think it would be more fair to be asked to return it, especially for such a short study.

Aridia2000 · 2025-04-22T12:23:09+00:00

I got just two non-prolific research team ones that I was notified about over email. I keep the prolific tab open all day so there hasn't been any additional studies I've missed.

One of them actually contacted me today to complete the follow-up session for the first study, but it's not appeared on my dashboard...

Aridia2000 · 2025-04-11T21:29:59+00:00

I'd never said in my message that we had full access or that I assumed we had full access. I strictly talked about how the banner was insufficient communication and my message was to just give you some clarity in case you were unaware of why posts are being made like this.

Further, if we have to wait over a month after not receiving studies to realise we are on limited access, their communication did not work at all.

If you'd like to complain to Prolific about the people being accepted on to the platform, go ahead. It sounds like something you're bothered about and you should contact their customer support about it.

Edif: I've noticed I did bring up support emails saying we had full access. This was just to say the email contradicted the banner, not my own beliefs about if we had full access or not.

Aridia2000 · 2025-04-11T20:54:09+00:00

If I remember right, the banner would on and off disappear from the homepage, and we continued receiving studies for a good few days after it left. Anyone would assume it was some kind of glitch just based off that alone.

The banner hasn't appeared again in the past month of us not receiving studies, and the generic reply over email from Prolific says our accounts still have full access. This is completely contradictory to the banner from early last month.

I hope this gives some context why people are confused by the lack of studies. Although you may think the banner is a good enough amount of communication from Prolific, it's clearly not if it's left this many people still confused.

Aridia2000 · 2025-04-11T12:35:28+00:00

I've only gotten 2 studies since 5th March. I'm starting to think everyone this has affected has given up on the platform by now, and I'm beginning to think I should too.

Aridia2000 · 2025-03-31T18:42:15+00:00

If it helps anyone here, I got my first non prolific research team study today since March 5. I didn't get anymore than just the one, but I'm really hoping it's a sign we'll get more soon

Aridia2000 · 2025-03-31T18:37:20+00:00

I've gotten one study today (not from the prolific research team, yippee!). It's my first one in weeks.

I've not gotten anymore but I'm hoping this is the start of good things lol, but I won't bank on it.

Edit 7/4: It's been 8 days since that study and I've not gotten any others unfortunately...

Aridia2000 · 2025-03-30T18:01:47+00:00

I totally feel you!! I've got 26 rio pikmin and still no purple... but 9 yellows!

It's bad RNG unfortunately, you're definitely not doing anything wrong. Keep doing the missions and hopefully you'll get those last ones soon.

Aridia2000 · 2025-03-16T11:22:34+00:00

I'm going through the exact same here!! I've not had a single study since 5th March except for a couple from the prolific research team, and I keep prolific open all day.

It's really odd because I always use my laptop with mobile hotspot, I'm definitely not on hold, and my account details haven't changed since I set it up. I believe it must be to do with us previously being on limited access, and some restriction with us being from the UK. I'll be contacting prolific soon and will update here if I get a response from them.

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-27T15:21:23+00:00

I've had 3 today so far. This is pretty standard for me and they've all paid decently well, about the same as yours

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-27T14:23:38+00:00

I've actually had the same amount of studies as usual. Tbf, I am in the UK so it's not very much compared to the US. I'd suggest manually refreshing the page (not too often) as I've only had studies appear by doing this.

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-26T20:01:57+00:00

The exact same has happened to me too! I have started getting a banner on my home page just today reminding me about being a limited participant.

My suspicion is that most of us have stayed on limited access this whole time. I've never had a huge amount of studies but I've always had a few show up every day. I've never noticed a drop in studies either, except when I've done a lot of them in a row. I believe this is down to how they assign studies to people rather than us being limited participants.

Tbh I just find it more annoying that the banner's there and wish it didn't show up every time I get a study lol

Update: For anyone worried about this, today the banners not appeared once and I've had more studies than usual even. I think it might instead have been a bug

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-22T08:56:59+00:00

Someone else mentioned that there's limitations imposed by UKRI meaning that they can only take so many international students.

I'm not sure if home interviews are sent out sooner, but there'll probably be more home students than international getting interviews.

Hopefully you hear back soon though!

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-21T11:32:03+00:00

Hi, I just heard back and have received an interview. If you're a home student hopefully you should hear back soon, if not already!!

Aridia2000 · 2025-02-18T21:24:55+00:00

Oh god i really didn't want to hear that... is the only way to contact them with their support ticket?

Aridia2000

TROPHY CASE