Confused about employment status!

txr105

I have no idea what to put down as my employment status on credit card applications.

I am a doctoral researcher which would make me a student. However I don't pay fees and get a tax free allowance from an industrial sponsor guaranteed for 4 years. So unlike regular students I have a guaranteed monthly income.

I'm also employed part-time as a lab assistant teaching undergraduates.

I would normally put time postgraduate student but a lot of applications don't have this option and I don't think saying I'm a student is right most of the time since they are probably referring to fee paying undergraduates.

In terms of actual amounts I get £21,000 as a tax free stipend. Plus around another £1000 as a teaching assistant depending on what's available which is payed through PAYE

agrinnall

If the stipend had been lower (good result to get that much by the way!) and the pay higher it might have been worth categorising yourself as a teaching assistant, but with the vast majority of your income coming from the stipend I don't think that would be sensible. I'm not sure that there is an easy answer other than to only apply for cards where you are allowed to say you are a postgrad and ignore the ones that won't let you.

How many cards are you applying for? In general you should keep the number of credit searches as low as possible otherwise you might blow your chances of getting any of them.