I've been rummaging around UKY the last couple of days and have found it useful. Decided to join so that I can ask a few more questions, but let me first give a bit of an intro.
I'm finishing a PhD in mathematics at the moment and have been offered a Marshall Sherfield Fellowship to spend two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics starting this fall. My Tier 5 (Temp Worker/Gov't Authorised Exchange) visa application was dispatched to Chicago on Thursday. I found the UKBA instructions awfully confusing, and I'm someone who enjoys reading and writing policy documents. WorldBridge was even less helpful whenever I had a question. Compounding matters are that the Marshall Commission didn't award a fellowship last year and LSE has never had a MSF before, so current immigration rules for such an individual were confusing to them.
Assuming my visa application goes through cleanly, I'll leave for London in late September. I'll have a few days to look for a flat, establish a bank account, etc. before Michaelmas Term starts at LSE. At the moment, I'm trying to be proactive about figuring out what sort of documentation I should have from the US to help me get a bank account opened, rent a flat, and do any of the other initial settling in things. Oh, yeah, and get my stuff shipped over to the UK. It seems like there are a lot of useful threads around here on these topics, but if anyone has favorites that aren't pinned to the top of a forum, I'd love to know about them.
