Thank you for your application for a funded studentship in the Centre for Education and Educational Technology at The Open University. You put in a strong application which is why you were called for a telephone interview.
I know that you will be very disappointed to hear that your application has not been successful. I would like to reassure you that we thought highly of the proposal that you submitted and you were competing against an extremely strong field of candidates.
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If I may I'd like to reply off-the-record. Your application and interview were first-rate and I can't think of anything in particular that you could have done to improve it. Unfortunately we had just one studentship available for this topic and there was someone with rather more experience. You shouldn't feel downhearted at all about this outcome although I'm sure it is disappointing.
I'd be delighted if you applied next year...